
Qass 
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in 2011 with funding from 
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http://www.archive.org/details/poemsofhenrytimr01timr 







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[Reprodticed/or this memorial editio7i from the oil portrait i7i Hon. IVilliant A . Courtetiay^s 
Library, Innisf alien, South Carolina^ 



S^emortal COttton 



POEMS OF 

HENRY TIMROD 

II 

WITH 
MEMOIR AND PORTRAIT 




■^mi^mrtnurm 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1899 

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75 3o7o 



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fell 



'?9697 



COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY MRS. KATE LLOYD 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



^WO COFfgg ^^ 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION vii 

THE LATE JUDGE GEORGE S. BRYAN .... XXxix 

- SPRING 3 

• THE COTTON BOLL 6 

• PR.ECEPTOR AMAT 12 

-^ • THE PROBLEM l6 

• A year's courtship 20 

■^^ SERENADE , . . . 23 

—- • YOUTH AND MANHOOD 24 

» HARK TO THE SHOUTING WIND ...... 26 

► TOO. LONG, O SPIRIT OF STORM 27 

• THE LILY CONFIDANTE 28 

-f- t THE STREAM IS FLOWING FROM THE WEST . . . 30 

~t" ' VOX ET PR.«:TEREA NIHIL 3I 

-f • MADELINE 32 

A DEDICATION 36 

KATIE 38 

• WHY SILENT ? . 45 

• TWO PORTRAITS 46 

• LA BELLE JUIVE 57 

AN. EXOTIC 59 

. THE ROSEBUDS 61 • 

-A mother's WAIL 62 

^OUJl WILLIE 64 

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OP THE NEW 

THEATRE AT RICHMOND 69 

• A VISION OF POESY 74 

■ THE PAST 100 

• DREAMS lOI 

^- 'THE ARCTIC VOYAGER I03 

' DRAMATIC FRAGMENT .0 I05 

• THE SUMMER BOWER I06 



iv CONTENTS 

r— ^ A RHAPSODY OF A SOUTHERN WINTER NIGHT . . 109 

« FLOWER-LIFE II3 

-— A SUMMER SHOWER II5 

— '\'BABY'S AGE 117 

*"• » THE MESSENGER ROSE I18 

t— » » ON PRESSING SOME FLOWERS Iig 

^— - 1866 — ADDRESSED TO THE OLD YEAR .... 120 

4" ' STANZAS : A MOTHER GAZES UPON HER DAUGHTER . . 122 

'i' » HYMN SUNG AT AN ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASYLUM OF 

ORPHANS AT CHARLESTON 124 

4" • TO A CAPTIVE OWL 125 

-j- • love's logic 127 

-4> . second love 128 

-J- . HYMN SUNG AT THE CONSECRATION OF MAGNOLIA CEM- 
ETERY 129 

HYMN SUNG AT A SACRED CONCERT . . . . . 130 

•\- LINES TO R. L I3I 

-f- ' TO WHOM ? 132 

4- • TO THEE 133 

-j- STORM AND CALM I34 

-j- ^ RETIREMENT . . . . . . . , . 136 

k A COMMON THOUGHT I37 

POEMS WRITTEN IN WAR TIMES 

— CAROLINA 141 

— A CRY TO ARMS I44 

CHARLESTON „ 146 

RIPLEY 148 

ETHNOGENESIS I50 

CARMEN TRIUMPHALE 154 

THE UNKNOWN DEAD I57 

.THE TWO ARMIES 158 

CHRISTMAS 160 

-L.ODE SUNG ON THE OCCASION OF DECORATING THE GRAVES 

OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY 164 

SONNETS 

«— » X "poet! IF ON A LASTING FAME BE BENT" . . . 169 

. » "most men KNOW LOVE BUT AS A PART OF LIFE" , 170 



CONTENTS V 

— ■ "life ever seems as from its present site " . . 171 

— ■» "they dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly". . 172 
— . » "some truths there be are better left unsaid" . 173 

— • "i scarcely grieve, o nature! at the lot" . . 174 

— » "grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheek" . 175 
■ — ^ "at last, beloved nature! I have met". . . 176 

"l KNOW not why, but ALL THIS WEARY DAY" . .177 

"WERE I THE POET-LAUREATE OF THE FAIRIES" . I78 
"j~ * "WHICH ARE THE CLOUDS, AND WHICH THE MOUN- 
TAINS? see" 179 

•j^ • "what GOSSAMER LURES THEE NOW? WHAT HOPE, WHAT 

name" 180 

4- « " i thank you, kind and best beloved friend" , isl 
4- . "are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my 

RHYMES " 182 

-» IN MEMORIAM — HARRIS SIMONS 183 

POEMS NOW FIRST COLLECTED 

SONG' COMPOSED FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY . . 187 

A BOUQUET 188 

lines: " I STOOPED FROM STAR-BRIGHT REGIONS" . . 189 

A TRIFLE T90 

lines: "I SAW, OR DREAMED I SAW, HER SITTING LONE " 191 

• SONNET: "if I HAVE GRACED NO SINGLE SONG OF MINE" 192 

TO ROSA — : ACROSTIC I93 

Note. The frontispiece portrait of Henry Tinmrod was engraved 
from the portrait in the possession of Hon. William A. Courtenay, 
for the Century Company, who have kindly presented it for use in 
this volume. 



INTRODUCTION 

" A TRUE poet is one of the most precious gifts 
that can be bestowed on a generation." He 
speaks for it and he speaks to it. Reflecting and 
interpreting his age and its thoughts, feelings, and 
purposes, he speaks for it; and with a love of 
truth, with a keener moral insight into the univer- 
sal heart of man, and with the intuition of inspira- 
tion, he speaks to it, and through it to the world. 
It is thus 

" The poet to the whole wide world belongs, 
Even as the Teacher is the child's." 

" Nor is it to the great masters alone that our hom- 
age and thankfulness are due. Wherever a true 
child of song strikes his harp, we love to listen. 
All that we ask is that the music be native, born of 
impassioned impulse that will not be denied, heart- 
felt, like the lark when she soars up to greet the 
morning and pours out her song by the same quiv- 
ering ecstasy that impels her flight." For though 
the voices be many, the oracle is one, for " God 
gave the poet his song." 

Such was Henry Timrod, the Southern poet. A 
child of nature, his song is the voice of the South- 



viii INTRODUCTION 

land. Born in Charleston^ S. C, his life cast in 
the seething torrent of civil war, his voice was also 
the voice ^of Carolina, and through her of the 
South, in all the rich glad life poured out in patri- 
otic pride into that fatal struggle, in all the valor 
and endurance of that dark conflict, in all the 
gloom of its disaster, and in all the sacred tender- 
ness that clings about its memories. He was the 
poet of the Lost Cause, the finest interpreter of 
the feelings and traditions of the splendid heroism 
of a brave people. Moreover, by his catholic 
spirit, his wide range, and world-wide sympathies, 
he is a true American poet. 

The purpose of the Timrod Memorial Associa- 
tion of his native city and State, in undertaking 
this new edition of his poems, is to erect a suitable 
public memorial to the poet, and also to let his own 
words renew and keep his own memory in his 
land's literature. 

The earliest edition of Timrod's poems was a 
small volume by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, in 
i860, just before the Civil War. This contained 
only the poems of the first eight or nine years pre- 
vious, and was warmly welcomed North and South. 
The " New York Tribune " then greeted this small 
first volume in these words : " These poems are 
worthy of a wide audience, and they form a wel- 
come offering to the common literature of our 
country." 



INTRODUCTION ix 

In this first volume was evinced the culture, the 
lively fancy, the delicate and vigorous imagination, 
and the finished artistic power of his mind, even 
then rejoicing in the fullness and freshness of its 
creations and in the unwearied flow of its natural 
music. But it fell then on the great world of let- 
ters almost unheeded, shut out by the war cloud 
that soon broke upon the land, enveloping all in 
darkness. 

The edition of his complete poems was not 
issued until the South was recovering from the 
ravage of war, and was entitled " The Poems of 
Henry Timrod, edited with a sketch of the Poet's 
life by Paul H. Hayne. E. J. Hale & Son, pub- 
lishers, New York, 1873." And immediately, in 
1874, there followed a second edition of this vol- 
ume, which contained the noble series of war 
poems and other lyrics written since the edition of 
i860. In. 1884 an illustrated edition of "Katie" 
was published by Hale & Son, New York. All of 
these editions were long ago exhausted by an 
admiring public. 

The present edition contains the poems of all 
the former editions, and also some earlier poems 
not heretofore published. 

The name of Timrod has been closely identified 
with the history of South Carolina for over a cen- 
tury. Before the Revolution, Henry Timrod, of 
German birth, the founder of the family in Amer- 



X INTRODUCTION 

ica, was a prominent citizen of Charleston, and the 
president of that historic association, the German 
Friendly Society, still existing, a century and a 
quarter old. We find his name first on the roll of 
the German Fusiliers of Charleston, volunteers 
formed in May, 1775, for the defense of the coun- 
try, immediately on hearing of the battle of Lex- 
ington. Again in the succeeding generation, in 
the Seminole war and in the peril of St. Augus- 
tine, the German Fusiliers were commanded by his 
son, Captain William Henry Timrod, who was the 
father of the poet, and who himself published a 
volume of poems in the early part of the century. 
He was the editor of a literary periodical published 
in Charleston, to which he himself largely contrib- 
uted. He was of strong intellect and delicate feel- 
ings, and an ardent patriot. 

Some of the more striking of the poems of the 
elder Timrod are the following. Washington Ir- 
ving said of these lines that Tom Moore had written 
no finer lyric : — 

TO TIME, THE OLD TRAVELER 

They slander thee, Old Traveler, 

Who say that thy delight 
Is to scatter ruin, far and wide, 

In thy wantonness of might : 
For not a leaf that falleth 

Before thy restless wings, 
But in thy flight, thou changest it 

To a thousand brighter things. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Thou passest o'er the battlefield 

Where the dead lie stiff and stark, 
Where naught is heard save the vulture's scream, 

And the gaunt wolf's famished bark ; 
But thou hast caused the grain to spring 

From the blood-enriched clay, 
And the waving corn-tops seem to dance 

To the rustic's merry lay. 

Thou hast strewed the lordly palace 

In ruins on the ground, 
And the dismal screech of the owl is heard 

Where the harp was wont to sound ; 
But the selfsame spot thou coverest 

With the dwellings of the poor, 
And a thousand happy hearts enjoy 

What one usurped before. 

'T is true thy progress layeth 

Full many a loved one low, 
And for the brave and beautiful 

Thou hast caused our tears to flow ; 
But always near the couch of death 

Nor thou, nor we can stay ; 
And the breath of thy departing wmgs. 

Dries all our tears away ! 

THE MOCKING-BIRD 

Nor did lack 
Sweet music to the magic of the scene : 
The little crimson-breasted Nonpareil 
Was there, his tiny feet scarce bending down 
The silken tendril that he lighted on 
To pour his love notes ; and in russet coat. 
Most homely, like true genius bursting forth 



xii INTRODUCTION 

In spite of adverse fortune, a full choir 

Within himself, the merry Mock Bird sate, 

Filling the air with melody ; and at times, 

In the rapt favor of his sweetest song, 

His quivering form would spring into the sky. 

In spiral circles, as if he would catch 

New powers from kindred warblers in the clouds 

Who would bend down to greet him ! 

These lines, addressed to the poet by his father, 
have a pathetic interest : — 

TO HARRY 

Harry, my little blue-eyed boy, 
I love to have thee playing near ; 

There 's music in thy shouts of joy 
To a fond father's ear. 

I love to see the lines of mirth 

Mantle thy cheek and forehead fair, 

As if all pleasures of the earth 
Had met to revel there ; 

For gazing on thee, do I sigh 
That those most happy years must flee, 

And thy full share of misery 
Must fall in life on thee ! 

There is no lasting grief below. 

My Harry ! that flows not from guilt ; 

Thou canst not read my meaning now — 
In after times thou wilt. 

Thou 'It read it when the churchyard clay 
Shall lie upon thy father's breast, 

And he, though dead, will point the way 
Thou shalt be always blest. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

They '11 tell thee this terrestrial ball, 
To man for his enjoyment given, 

Is but a state of sinful thrall 
To keep the soul from heaven. 

My boy ! the verdure-crowned hills, 

The vales where flowers innumerous blow. 

The music of ten thousand rills 
Will tell thee, 't is not so. 

God is no tyrant who would spread 
Unnumbered dainties to the eyes, 

Yet teach the hungering child to dread 
That touching them he dies ! 

No ! all can do his creatures good, 

He scatters round with hand profuse — 

The only precept understood, 
Enjoy, but not abuse ! 

The poet's mother was the daughter of Mr. 
Charles Prince, a citizen of Charleston, whose 
parents had come from England just before the 
Revolution. Mr. Prince had married Miss French, 
daughter of an officer in the Revolution, whose 
family were from Switzerland. It was the influ- 
ence of his mother also that helped to form the 
poet's character, and his intense and passionate 
love of nature. Her beautiful face and form, her 
purity and goodness, her delight in all the sights 
and sounds of the country, her childish rapture in 
wood and field, her love of flowers and trees, and 
all the mystery and gladness of nature, are among 
the cherished memories of all her children, and 
vividly described by the poet's sister. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

William Henry Timrod, father of the poet, died 
of disease contracted in the Florida war, and his 
family thereafter were in straitened circumstances. 
Nevertheless, the early education of his gifted son 
was provided for. Paul H. Hayne, the poet, was 
one of his earliest friends and schoolmates at 
Charleston's best school. They sat together, and 
to his brother boy-poet he first showed his earliest 
verses in exulting confidence. This friendship and 
confidence lasted through life, and Hayne has ten- 
derly embalmed it in his sketch of the poet. We 
have this faithful picture of him at that time : — 

" Modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, 
but with melody ever in his heart and on his lip. 
Though always slow of speech, he was yet, like 
Burns, quick to learn. The chariot wheels might 
jar in the gate through which he tried to drive his 
winged steeds, but the horses were of celestial tem- 
per and the car purest gold." 

His school-fellows remember him as silent and 
shy, full of quick impulse, and with an eager ambi- 
tion, insatiable in his thirst for books, yet mingling 
freely in all sports, and rejoicing unspeakably in 
the weekly holiday and its long rambles through 
wood and field. " The sweet security of streets " 
had no charm for him. He rejoiced in Nature and 
her changing scenes and seasons. She was always 
to him comfort, refreshment, balm. She never 
turned her face from him, and through all his 
years he " leaned on her breast with loving trust- 
fulness as a little child." 



INTRODUCTION xv 

But he had other teachers. He studied all classic 
literature. "The ^schylean drama had no attrac- 
tion for him ; he reveled in the rich and elegant 
strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of 
Horace and the silver lute of Catullus." From the 
full and inexhaustible fountain of English letters 
he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton, Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were 
his immediate inspiration. 

His college life at the University of Georgia was 
interrupted by sickness and cramped by lack of 
means, and his literary plans were foiled by neces- 
sity. Nevertheless, he left his Alma Mater with a 
mind stirred to its depths, and with a large store of 
learning, and had already sounded with clear note 
those chords which were afterwards so vocal in 
melody. 

Dr. J. Dickson Bruns has left this graphic de- 
scription of Timrod's personal appearance, and of 
some prominent traits of his social character : — 

" In stature," he says, " Timrod was far below 
the medium height. He had always excelled in 
boyish sports, and, as he grew to manhood, his 
unusual breadth of shoulder still seemed to indi- 
cate a physical vigor which the slender wrists, thin, 
transparent hands, and habitually lax attitude but 
too plainly contradicted. 

"The square jaw was almost stern in its strongly 
pronounced lines, the mouth large, the lips exqui- 
sitely sensitive, the gray eyes set deeply under mas- 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

sive brows, and full of a melancholy and pleading 
tenderness, which attracted attention to his face 
at once, as the face of one who had thought and 
suffered much. 

" His walk was quick and nervous, with an energy 
in it that betokened decision of character, but ill 
sustained by the stammering speech ; for in society 
he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of 
men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he 
would pour out his inmost heart ; but let two or 
three be gathered together, above all, introduce a 
stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unob- 
trusive listener, though never a moody or uncon- 
genial one ! 

" Among men of letters, he was always esteemed 
as a most sympathetic companion ; timid, reserved, 
unready, if taken by surprise, but highly cultivated, 
and still more highly endowed. 

" The key to his social character was to be found 
in the feminine gentleness of his temperament. He 
shrank from noisy debate, and the wordy clash of 
argument, as from a blow. It stunned and bewil- 
dered him, and left him, in the melee, alike inca- 
pable of defense or attack. And yet, when some 
burly protagonist would thrust himself too rudely 
into the ring, and try to bear down opposition by 
sheer vehemence of declamation, from the corner 
where he sat ensconced in unregarded silence, he 
would suddenly sling out some sharpy swift pebble of 
thought^ which he had been slowly rounding, and 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

smite with an aim so keen and true as rarely failed 
to bring down the boastful Anakim ! " 

In Charleston, as a first effort in life, for a brief 
period Timrod attempted the law, but found that 
jealous mistress unsuited to his life work, though 
he had all the opportunity afforded him in the 
office of his friend, the Hon. J. L. Petigru, the 
great jurist. Leaving the bar, he thenceforward 
devoted himself to literature and to his art. 

Charleston to Timrod was home, and he always 
returned with kindling spirit to the city of his love. 
There were all his happiest associations and the 
delight of purest friendships, — W. Gilmore Simms 
and Paul Hayne, and the rest of the literary coterie 
that presided over " Russell's Magazine," and Judge 
Bryan and Dr. Bruns (to whom Hayne dedicated 
his edition of Timrod's poems), and others were 
of this glad fellowship, and his social hours were 
bright in their intercourse and in the cordial ap- 
preciation of his genius and the tender love they 
bore him. These he never forgot, and returning 
after the ravage of war to his impoverished and 
suffering city, he writes, in the last year of his 
young life, " My eyes were blind to everything and 
ever}^body but a few old friends." 

Suited by endowment and prepared by special 
study for a professorship, still all his efforts for the 
academic chair failed, and, finally, he was com- 
pelled to become a private teacher, an office the 
sacredness of which he profoundly realized. In 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

his leisure hours he now gave himself up to deeper 
study of nature, literature, and man. It was in 
these few years of quiet retreat that he wrote the 
poems contained in the first edition of his works, 
1859-60, which, laden with all the poet's longing 
to be heard, were little heeded in the first great 
shock of war. Indeed, in such a storm, what shel- 
ter could a poet find ? An ardent Carolinian, de- 
voted to his native State with an allegiance as to 
his country, he left his books and study, and threw 
himself into the struggle, a volunteer in the army. 
In the first years of the war he was in and near 
Charleston, and wrote those memorable poems and 
martial lyrics: "Carolina," "A Call to Arms," 
" Charleston," " Ripley," " Ethnogenesis," and 
" The Cotton Boll," which deeply stirred the heart 
of his State, and, indeed, of the whole South. His 
was the voice of his people. Under its spell the 
public response was quick, and promised largest 
honor and world-wide fame for the poet. The pro- 
ject formed by some of the most eminent men of 
the State, late in 1862, was to publish an illustrated 
and highly embellished edition of his works in Lon- 
don. The war correspondent of the " London 
Illustrated News," Vizitelly, himself an artist, pro- 
mised original illustrations, and the future seemed 
bright for the gratification of his heart's desire, to 
be known and heard in the great literary centre of 
the English-speaking world. But disappointment 
again was his lot Amid the increasing stress of 



INTRODUCTION xix 

the conflict, every public and private energy in the 
South was absorbed in maintaining the ever weak- 
ening struggle ; and with all art and literature and 
learning our poet's hopes were buried in the com- 
mon grave of war ; not because he was not loved 
and cherished, and his genius appreciated, but 
because a terrible need was upon his people, 
and desperate issues were draining their life-blood. 
Then he went to the front. Too weak for the field 
(for the fatal weakness that finally sapped his life 
was then upon him), he was compelled, under 
medical direction, to retire from the battle ranks, 
and made a last desperate effort to serve the cause 
he loved as a war correspondent. In this capacity 
he joined the great army of the West after the 
battle of Shiloh. The story of his camp life was 
indeed pathetic. Dr. Bruns writes of him then : 
"One can scarcely conceive of a situation more 
hopelessly wretched than that of a mere child in 
the world's ways suddenly flung down into the 
heart of that strong retreat, and tossed like a straw 
on the crest of those refluent waves from which he 
escaped as by a miracle." Home he came, baffled, 
dispirited, and sore hurt, to receive the succor of 
generous friendship, and for a brief time a safe 
congenial refuge, in 1864, in an editor's chair of 
the " South Carolinian," at the capital of his native 
State. Here his strong pen wrote the stirring edi- 
torials of that critical time, and there, tempted by 
the passing hour of comparative calm, he mar- 



XX INTRODUCTION 

ried Miss Kate Goodwin, " Katie, the fair Saxon " 
of his exquisite song. Here the war that had 
broken all his plans, and wrecked his health and 
hopes, and made literature for a time in the South 
a beggar's vocation, left him with wife and child, 
the " darling Willie " of his verse, dependent upon 
his already sapped and fast failing strength for 
support. Here he saw the capital of his native 
State, marked for vengeance, pitilessly destroyed 
by fire and sword. Here gaunt ruin stalked and 
want entered his own home, made desolate as all 
the hearthstones of his people. Here the peace 
that ensued was the peace of the desert ! Here 
the army, defeated and broken, came back after 
the long heroic struggle to blackened chimneys, 
sole vestige of home, and the South, with not even 
bread for her famished children, still stood in 
solemn silence by those deeper furrows watered 
with blood. The suffering that he endured was 
the common suffering of those around him, — actual 
physical want and lack of the commonest comforts 
of life, felt most keenly by his sensitive nature and 
delicate constitution. In the midst of this fierce 
stress, his darling boy, the crown of his life, died. 
All his affections, it seemed, were poured out at 
once, as water spilled upon the ground. He was 
dying of consumption, and earth shadows crowded 
around him. 

Though long in feeble health, his last illness was 
brief. The best physicians lovingly gave their skill- 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

ful ministration, and the State's most eminent men, 
in their common need, tenderly cared for him and 
his. With death before him, he clung passionately 
to his art, absorbed in that alone and in the great 
Beyond. His latest occupation was correcting the 
proof-sheets of his own poems, and he passed away 
with them by his side, stained with his life-blood. 

In the autumn of 1867 he was laid by his beloved 
child in Trinity churchyard, Columbia, S. C. Gen- 
eral Hampton, Governor Thompson, and other 
great Carolinians bore him to the grave, — a grave 
that, through the sackcloth of the Reconstruction 
period in South Carolina, remained without a stone. 
But as he himself wrote of the host of the Southern 
dead of the war, — 

" In seeds of laurel in the earth 

The blossom of your fame is blown, 
And somewhere waiting for its birth, 
The shaft is in the stone." 

In later years loving friends reared a small 
memorial shaft to mark his grave. It was in that 
dark period that Carl McKinley's genius was 
touched to these fine lines. 

AT TIMROD'S GRAVE. 1877 

Harp of the South 1 no more, no more 

Thy silvery strings shall quiver, 
The one strong hand might win thy strains 

Is chilled and stilled forever. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

Our one sweet singer breaks no more 

The silence sad and long, 
The land is hushed from shore to shore, 

It brooks no feebler song ! 

No other voice can charm our ears, 
None other soothe our pain ; 

Better these echoes lingering yet, 
Than any ruder strain. 

For singing, Fate has given sighs, 
For music we make moan ; 

Oh, who may touch the harp-strings since 
That whisper — '■'He is gone I " 

See where he lies — his last sad home 

Of all memorial bare, 
Save for a little heap of leaves 

The winds have gathered there ! 

One fair frail shell from some far sea 
Lies lone above his breast, 

Sad emblem and sole epitaph 
To mark his place of rest. 

The sweet winds murmur in its heart 

A music soft and low, 
As they would bring their secrets still 

To him who sleeps below. 

And lo ! one tender, tearful bloom 
Wins upward through the grass, 

As some sweet thought he left unsung 
Were blossoming at last. 

Wild weeds grow rank about the place, 
A dark, cold spot, and drear j 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

The dull neglect that marked his life 
Has followed even here. 

Around shine many a marble shaft 

And polished pillars fair, 
And strangers stand on Timrod's grave 

To praise them, unaware ! 

" Hold up the glories of thy dead ! " 
To thine own self be true. 
Land that he loved I Come, honor now 
This grave that honors you ! 

The one characteristic above all others that 
marked the poet's life was his unfaltering trust, — 
the soul's unclouded sky, a quenchless radiance 
of blessed sunlight amid the deep darkness that 
encompassed him. 

As in his poetry there is no false note, no doubt- 
ful sentiment, no selfish grief, even when he sings 
with breast against the thorn, so in his life do we 
find no word of bitterness or moaning or com- 
plaining. Even amid the terrible blight of war 
and its final utter ruin, prophet-like, he speaks in 
faith and hope and courage. His own heart break- 
ing, and life ebbing, he writes of Spring as the true 
Reconstructionist, and pleads her message to his 
stricken people. It is so true and prophetic that 
we quote the words written in April, 1866. 

"For Spring is a true Reconstructionist, — a 
reconstructionist in the best and most practical 
sense. There is not a nook in the land in which 
she is not at this moment exerting her influence 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

in preparing a way for the restoration of the South. 
No politician may oppose her; her power defies 
embarrassment; but she is not altogether inde- 
pendent of help. She brings us balmy airs and 
gentle dews, golden suns and silver rains ; and she 
says to us, 'These are the materials of the only 
work in which you need be at present concerned ; 
avail yourselves of them to reclothe your naked 
country and feed your impoverished people, and 
you will find that, in the discharge of that task, you 
have taken the course which will most certainly 
and most peacefully conduct you to the position 
which you desire. Turn not aside to bandy epi- 
thets with your enemies ; stuff your ears, like the 
princess in the Arabian Nights, against words of 
insult and wrong; pause not to muse over your 
condition, or to question your prospects ; but toil on 
bravely, silently, surely.' . . , 

" Such are the words of wise and kindly counsel, 
which, if we attend rightly, we may all hear in the 
winds and read in the skies of Spring. Nowhere, 
however, does she speak with so eloquent a voice 
or so pathetic an effect as in this ruined town. She 
covers our devastated courts with images of reno- 
vation in the shape of flowers ; she hangs once 
more in our blasted gardens the fragrant lamps of 
the jessamine ; in our streets she kindles the maple 
like a beacon ; and from amidst the charred and 
blackened ruins of once happy homes she pours, 
through the mouth of her favorite musician, the 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

mocking-bird, a song of hope and joy. What is 
the lesson which she designs by these means to 
convey ? It may be summed in a single sentence, 
— forgetfulness of the past, effort in the present, 
and trust for the future." 

Such was the lofty creed and last hopeful, but 
dying message to his brothers of the South, whose 
war songs he had written, and the requiem of 
whose martyred hosts he had chanted. 

Such was the tragedy that ended in October, 1867, 
with the hero at the age of thirty-seven; glory, 
genius, anguish, tears, but unconquerable faith and 
heroic fortitude. His larger life scarce begun, his 
full power felt, but only half expressed, he realized 
deeply — 

" The petty done, the vast undone ! " 

He yearned with passionate longing and hope and 
conscious might to fulfill an even greater mission ; 
but in the infinite providence of God the full fruit- 
age of this exquisite soul was for another sphere. 
He was indeed " one of those who stirred us, a 
friend of man and a lover. In no country of this 
earth could he long have been an alien, and that 
may now be said of his spirit. In no part of this 
universe could it feel lonely or unbefriended ; it 
was in harmony with all that flowers or gives per- 
fume in life." 

The story of his last days, as given by his poet- 
friend, Paul Hayne, at the latter's cottage among 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

the pines, is of tender and peculiar interest, and 
we quote it here, as it was written in 1873 : — 

... In the latter summer-tide of this same year 
(1867), I again persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how 
sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories of 
that rich, clear, prodigal August of ''6'] ! 

We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden 
shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow- 
white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through 
the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene 
motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon 
Arctic seas. Like Lazzaroni we basked in the quiet 
noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of 
yet more " charmed sleep." Or we smoked, conversing 
lazily between the puffs, 

" Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped 
From out the crumbling bases of the sand." 

But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets " rolling 
down like a chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy 
gloaming," were the favorite hours of the day with him. 
He would often apostrophize twilight in the language 
of Wordsworth's sonnet : — 

" Hail, twilight ! sovereign of one peaceful hour ! 
Not dull art thou as undiscerning night ; 
But only studious to remove from sight 
Day's mutable distinctions." 

" Yes," said he, " she is indeed sovereign of one peace- 
ful hour! In the hardest, busiest time one feels the 
calm, merciful-minded queen stealing upon one in the 
fading light, and ' whispering,' as Ford has it (or is it 
Fletcher ?), — ' whispering tranquillity.' " 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

When in-doors and disposed to read, he took much 
pleasure in perusing the poems of Robert Buchanan 
and Miss Ingelow. The latter's " Ballads " particularly- 
delighted him. One, written " in the old English man- 
ner," he quickly learned by heart, repeating it with a 
relish and fervor indescribable. 

Here is the opening stanza : — 

" Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the 

owlet hoot ; 
Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the 

tree, O ! 
The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O ! sweetest lass, 

and sweetest lass 
Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with 

me, O ! " 

With but^a slight effort of memory I can vividly 
recall his voice and manner in repeating these simple 
yet beautiful lines. 

They were the last verses I ever heard from the poet's 
lips. 

Just as the woods were assuming their first delicate 
autumnal tints, Timrod took his leave of us. In a con- 
versation on the night but one previous to his depar- 
ture, we had been speaking of Dr. Parr and other liter- 
ary persons of unusual age, when he observed : " I 
have n't the slightest desire, P , to be an octogena- 
rian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr; but I hope 
that I may be spared until I amyf/zy or fifty-five." 

" About Shakespeare's age," I suggested. 

" Oh ! " he replied, smiling, " I was not thinking of 
THAT ; but I 'm sure that after fifty-five I would begin 
to wither, mind and body, and one hates the idea of a 
mummy, intellectual or physical. Do you remember 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

that picture of extreme old age which Charles Reade 
gives us in ' Never too Late to Mend ' ? George 
Fielding, the hero, is about going away from England 
to try his luck in Australia. All his friends and rela- 
tions are around him, expressing their sorrow at his 
enforced voyage ; all but his grandfather, aged ninety- 
two, who sits stolid and mumbling in his armchair. 

"'Grandfather!' shouts George into the deafened 
ears, ' I 'm going a long journey ; mayhap shall never 
see you again ; speak a word to me before I go ! ' 
Grandfather looks up, brightens for a moment, and 
cackles feebly out : ' George, fetch me some snuff irova. 
where you 're going. See now ' (half whimpering), ' I 'm 
out of snuff.' A good point in the way of illustration, 
but not a pleasant picture." 

On the 13th of September, ten days after Timrod's 
return to Columbia, he wrote me the following note : — 

" Dear P : I have been too sick to write before, 

and am still too sick to drop you more than a few lines. 
You will be surprised and pained to hear that I have 
had a severe hemorrhage of the lungs. 

" I did not come home an instant too soon. I found 
them without money or provisions. Fortunately I 
brought with me a small sum. I won't teU you how 
small, but six dollars of it was from the editor of the 
* Opinion ' for my last poem. 

" I left your cKmate to my injury. But not only for 
the sake of my health, I begin already to look back with 
longing regret to ' Copse Hill.' You have all made me 
feel as if I had two beloved homes ! 

" I wish that I could divide myself between them ; or 
that I had wings, so that I might flit from one to other 
in a moment. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

" I hope soon to write you at length. Yours," etc. 

Again on the i6th I heard from him, thus : — 

"Yesterday I had a still more copious hemor- 
rhage ! . . . 

"I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or 
make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the 
temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of call- 
ing forth a score or two from you in return. 

" An awkward time this for me to be sick ! We are 
destitute of funds, almost of food. But God will pro- 
vide! 

"I send you a Sonnet, written the other day, as an 
Obituary for Mr. Harris Simons. Tell me what you 
think of it — be sure ! Love to your mother, wife, and 
my precious Willie [since the death of his own child he 
had turned with a yearning affection to my boy]. Let 
me hear from you soon — very soon! You'll do me 
more good than medicines ! " etc. 

On the 25th of the month confidence in Timrod's 
recovery was confirmed by a letter from Mrs. Good- 
win: — 

" Our brother," she writes, " is decidedly better ; and 
if there be no recurrence of the hemorrhage will, I hope, 
be soon convalescent ! " 

A week and upwards passed on in silence. I received 
no more communications from Columbia. But early in 
October a vaguely threatening report reached my ears. 
On the 9th it was mournfully confirmed. Forty-eight 
hours before, Henry Timrod had expired ! 

On the 7th of October, the mortal remains of the 
poet, so worn and shattered, were buried in the ceme- 
tery of Trinity Church, Columbia. 

There, in the ruined capital of his native State, 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

whence scholarship, culture, and social purity have been 
banished to give place to the orgies of semi-barbarians 
and the political trickery of adventurers and traitors; 
there, tranquil amid the vulgar turmoil of factions, 
reposes the dust of one of the truest and sweetest 
singers this country has given to the world. 

Nature, kinder to his senseless ashes than ever For- 
tune had been to the living man, is prodigal around 
Avc^<. '^^^ his grave — unmarked and unrecorded though it be — 

Q^A htj i'--^*^ Qf j^gj. flowers and verdant grasses, of her rains that 
'.A , fertilize, and her purifying dews. The peace he loved, 

and so vainly longed for through stormy years, has 
crept to him at last, but only to fall upon the pallid eye- 
lids, closed forever ; upon the pulseless limbs, and the 
breathless, broken heart. Still it is good to know that 

" After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well." 

Yet, from this mere material repose, this quiet of 
decaying atoms, surely the most skeptical of thinkers, 
in contemplation of suck a life and suck a death, must 
instinctively look from earth to heaven ; from the 
bruised and mouldering clod to the spirit infinitely 
exalted, and radiant in redemption. 

" A calm, a beautiful, a sacred star." 

The poetic creed of Timrod, expressed in his 
" Vision of Poesy," set the impress upon all his 
work. Conscious of his power, he reverently 
believed in the mission of the poet as prophet and 
teacher, — 

" The mission of Genius on Earth ! To uplift. 
Purify, and confirm, by its own gracious gift, 
The world," — 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

and he has consecrated his gift to its noblest uses 
in the discharge of that " high and holy debt." 

As lover of man and nature, his sympathy was 
universal ; no theme was too humble for his pen. 
" The same law that moulds a planet forms a drop 
of dew." " Humility is power ! " " We may trace 
the mighty sun above even by the shadow of a 
slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting ; 
that was only the passing form of the abiding. 
Passionately fond as he was of Nature, and nour- 
ished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote 
a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only 
the symbol, the image, to interpret his spiritual 
meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble words, 
that the abiding work is not raised in the heat 
of youth or the vapors of wine, or by " invocation 
to dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by 
devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich 
with all utterance and knowledge, and send out 
his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altars to 
touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." 

Under that inspiration and revelation the poet is 
a divine interpreter of (in his own words) — 

" All lovely things, and gentle — the sweet laugh 

Of children, Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's clasp, 
The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, 
The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp — 
All that exalts the grounds of happiness, 
All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

" To me are sacred ; at my holy shrine 

Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints; 
I turn life's tasteless waters into wine, 

And flush them through and through with purple tints. 
Wherever Earth is fai», and Heaven looks down, 
I rear my altars, and I wear my crown." 

It was this mission of Poetry that filled his mind 
and heart and life with abiding light, which made 
him cling passionately to life, not because of any 
physical fear of death, but because in that mission 
Art and Nature were so inexpressibly rich and 
sweet to him to reveal his message to man. In 
the benediction of his dying words, "Love is 
sweeter than rest ! " 

The moral purity of these poems is their dis- 
tinctive quality, as it was of the man. With a 
universal sympathy for all life, still he moved 
always on the highest planes of thought and feel- 
ing and purpose. He seemed always to be im- 
pressed in his art with the truth of his own lines, — 

" There is no unimpressive spot on earth, 
The beauty of the stars is over all." 

His earnestness and deep poetic insight clothed 
all themes with the beauty and light that is in and 
over all. 

Timrod's melancholy, the finest test of high 
poetic quality, when purified and spiritualized, has 
no Byronic bitterness, no selfish morbidness, no 
impenetrable gloom, but in his own exquisite lines 
it is, — 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

"A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, 
Each still to each corrective and relief, 
Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, 
And nothing wholly perishes but Grief. 

" Ah, me ! — not dies — no more than spirit dies ; 

But in a change like death is clothed with wings ; 
A serious angel, with entranced eyes, 
Looking to far off and celestial things." 

Again, in all these poems there is a nameless 
spell of a simplicity, fervid yet tender, and an 
imagination, strong yet delicate, both in its percep- 
tion and expression. 

His style, '^ like noble music unto noble words," 
is elaborate, yet perfectly natural. There is no 
trace of labor; grace guides and power impels. 
So perfect is it at times in its natural power that 
the mind is almost unconscious of the word-symbol 
in grasping immediately the thought revealed. 

There is in the verse a ceaseless melody and 
perfect finish. At times there is " the easy ele- 
gance of Catullus," always his delight, and a metri- 
cal translation of whose poems he had completed. 

Rare endowment with broad culture is evinced 
in the high intellectual level always maintained; 
and the evenness of quality that is always of the 
mountain top. He always knows his power, and 
its range. His song is always clear and true. 

Moreover, with a universality of poetic feeling, 
he has struck every chord, and always with a keen 
sensibility and delicacy of natural instinct. Among 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

the finest poems, how wide is this range and varied 
this power ! 

" The Vision of Poesy," his longest work, writ- 
ten in youth, essaying the mission and the phi- 
losophy of the poetic art, has some lofty passages, 
and all the promise of his later power, felicity, and 
melody. 

" A Year's Courtship " is in its glow, and grace, 
and music the perfection of classic art. 

The dainty voluptuousness in a " Serenade " 
kindles with the luxuriousness of the South. 

His " Praeceptor Amat " is warm with the breath 
of rapturous feeling, and rich with the fragrance of 
flowers. 

" Ethnogenesis," "the birth of the nation," is 
regarded by some his greatest poem. It is pro- 
phecy linked with the hope and aspiration of the 
newborn nation of the South. A permanent image 
of the Southern nature and character is thus richly 

portrayed : — 

" But the type 
Whereby we shall be known in every land 
Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, 
And through the cold, untempered ocean pours 
Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores 
May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze 
Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas." 

The Cotton Boll," in " the snow of Southern 
summers," is a forerunner of Lanier's " Corn." 
It reveals the mystic spell and kingly power of 
that far-stretching tropic snow, and contains that 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

glowing painting of Carolina from sea to mountain, 
which closes 

" No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, — - — "^ 
Or given a home to man ! " 

" Too Long, O Spirit of Storm," is the fused 
passion of the poet's heart appalled at the moral 
death of stagnation. It has all the intensity and 
subtlety of Shelley. 

In " The Lily Confidante," delicate and fanciful 
as it is, the reply of the Lily " is a simple yet sacred 
melody," hallowing the purity of passion. 

" The Arctic Voyager " suggests Tennyson's 
"Ulysses" in its high faith, lofty purpose, and 
sustained power. 

" Spring " is the burst of the Southern spring, 
in its flooding life and glory and beauty. There is 
" a nameless pathos in the air." A wonderful reve- 
lation is going on before our eyes ! No miracle 
could startle in the ever new creation, so strange 
and rapturous is this joy of sense and spiritual 
rebirth. 

Nor was his genius only reflective, and creative, 
and playful ; his was a trumpet voice also. When 
the blast of war sounded, his voice rang like a 
clarion in " Carolina " and " Call to Arms." Be- 
yond their local meaning, which kindles and thrills, 
now as then, the men of the South, they have an 
abiding, universal power from the standpoint of 
art; for there is nothing finer in all the martial 
strains of the lyric. 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

Paul Hayne, his brother poet, speaking of " Caro- 
lina," as " lines destined perhaps to outlive the 
political vitality of the State, whose antique fame 
they celebrate," said : — 

" I read them first, and was thrilled by their 
power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening 
in Fort Sumter ! Walking along the battlements, 
under the red light of a tempestuous sunset, the 
wind steadily and loudly blowing from off the bar 
across the tossing and moaning waste of waters, 
driven inland ; with scores of gulls and white sea- 
birds flying and shrieking round me, — those wild 
voices of Nature mingled strangely with the rhyth- 
mic roll and beat of the poet's impassioned music. 
The very spirit, or dark genius, of the troubled 
scene appeared to take up and to repeat such 
verses as — 

" ' I hear a murmur as of waves 

That grope their way through sunless caves, 
Like bodies struggling in their graves, 

Caroluia ! 
And now it deepens ; slow and grand 
It swells, as rolling to the land, 
An ocean broke upon the strand, 

Carolina ! 
Shout ! let it reach the startled Huns ! 
And roar with all thy festal gims ! 
It is the answer of thy sons, 

Carolina ! ' " 

Profoundly appealing as are Timrod's war strains, 
for they are the heart-cry of a people, still it should 



INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

be noted that there is scarcely a battle ode that 
does not close with an invocation to peace, such 
was the lofty nature of the poet. War to him was 
only the drawn sword of right, and truth, and jus- 
tice, which accomplished, the prayer for peace was 
ever on his lips, as witness the noble invocation to 
Peace, closing his " Christmas," that has so often 
stirred and hushed at once the heart of the South. 
The Ode, written for Memorial Day, April, 1867, 
of the Confederate graves at Charleston, was his 
last production. He had sung in lofty strains each 
phase of the struggle, its hope, its courage, its fear, 
its despair ; he now sings his latest song, a wreath 
of flowers upon the unmarked graves of the South- 
ern dead, and has hallowed these sacred mounds to 
his people in the words, — 

" There is no holier spot of ground 
Than where defeated valor lies, 
By mourning beauty crowned ! " 

These poems are written in the life-blood of the 
poet and his generation. The patriotic fire, the 
devoted sacrifice and splendid achievement, that 
"Carolina," "Cry to Arms," "Unknown Dead," 
" Carmen Triumphale," " Charleston," " Storm and 
Calm," and the other of the war poems celebrate 
were not only the rushing tide of earnest feeling 
of a noble people then, but are now a part of the 
glory and heritage of the State, of the South, and 
of the American republic. They were the mighty 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

heart-beats of that great epoch. They are now 
irrevocable history, and make these poems a part 
of the abiding literature of America. 

" A Common Thought " is the poet's premonition 
of his end; but he sees no vision of the dying 
glory of sunset, no going out into the dark, no pre- 
sentiment of a vague and gloomy voyage on a 
homeless sea ; but in the sunshine, in the growing 
light of ever broadening day, amid the joy and 
splendor of nature, bright prophecy and intuition 
of immortality, is to come the sudden, solemn 
mystery of the whisper, " He is gone ! " And so 
it was. For as the sun broadened into glad day, 
and the full radiance illumined and animated earth 
and sea and sky, " as it purpled in the zenith, as it 
brightened on the lawn," this rich young life, in 
its own fresh morning of genius and spiritual sun- 
shine, passed, and in his own triumphant words, — 

" not dies, no more than Spirit dies ; 
But in a change like death was clothed with wings." 



THE LATE JUDGE GEORGE S. BRYAN 

It would not be fitting that this memorial edi- 
tion of Timrod's Poems should go forth to the 
world without proper recognition, on the part of 
the TiMROD Memorial Association, of the relation 
occupied and the services rendered to the poet in 
his lifetime by the late Hon. George S. Bryan, of 
Charleston. During the whole of Timrod's career 
Judge Bryan was his devoted friend, ever ready to 
assist him materially, morally, and in every other 
respect. 

His faith in Timrod's genius never wavered, and 
but for his early assistance, sympathy, and encour- 
agement, much of the fruit of that genius would 
have been, lost or wasted. He helped him in ad- 
versity, cheered him in his hours of anxiety and 
despondency, and from first to last, throughout the 
literary and spiritual history of the poet, he did 
more than any other friend to keep alive in his 
heart the steadfast flame of faith in his poetic 
destiny; Judge Bryan's name must always be in- 
separably connected with Henry Timrod's in the 
literary annals of South Carolina. 

January, 1899. 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

heart-beats of that great epoch. They are now 
irrevocable history, and make these poems a part 
of the abiding literature of America. 

" A Common Thought " is the poet's premonition 
of his endj but he sees no vision of the dying 
glory of sunset, no going out into the dark, no pre- 
sentiment of a vague and gloomy voyage on a 
homeless sea ; but in the sunshine, in the growing 
light of ever broadening day, amid the joy and 
splendor of nature, bright prophecy and intuition 
of immortality, is to come the sudden, solemn 
mystery of the whisper, " He is gone ! " And so 
it was. For as the sun broadened into glad day, 
and the full radiance illumined and animated earth 
and sea and sky, " as it purpled in the zenith, as it 
brightened on the lawn," this rich young life, in 
its own fresh morning of genius and spiritual sun- 
shine, passed, and in his own triumphant words, — 

" not dies, no more than Spirit dies ; 
But in a change like death was clothed with wings." 



THE LATE JUDGE GEORGE S. BRYAN 

It would not be fitting that this memorial edi- 
tion of Timrod's Poems should go forth to the 
world without proper recognition, on the part of 
the TiMROD Memorial Association, of the relation 
occupied and the services rendered to the poet in 
his lifetime by the late Hon. George S. Bryan, of 
Charleston. During the whole of Timrod's career 
Judge Bryan was his devoted friend, ever ready to 
assist him materially, morally, and in every other 
respect. 

His faith in Timrod's genius never wavered, and 
but for his early assistance, sympathy, and encour- 
agement, much of the fruit of that genius would 
have been lost or wasted. He helped him in ad- 
versity, cheered him in his hours of anxiety and 
despondency, and from first to last, throughout the 
literary and spiritual history of the poet, he did 
more than any other friend to keep alive in his 
heart the steadfast flame of faith in his poetic 
destiny; Judge Bryan's name must always be in- 
separably connected with Henry Timrod's in the 
literary annals of South Carolina. 

January, 1899. 



POEMS 



SPRING 

Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air 
Which dwells with all things fair, 
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, 
Is with us once again. 

Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns 
Its fragrant lamps, and turns ^^^ 

Into a royal court with green festoons 
The banks of dark lagoons. 

In the deep heart of every forest tree 
The blood is all aglee. 

And there 's a look about the leafless bowers 
As if they dreamed of flowers. 

Yet still on every side we trace the hand 
Of Winter in the land, 
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, 
Flushed by the season's dawn ; 

Or where, like those strange semblances we find 
That age to childhood bind. 
The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, 
The brown of Autumn corn. 



4 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

As yet the turf is dark, although you know 
That, not a span below, 

A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, 
And soon will burst their tomb. 



Already, here and there, on frailest stems 
Appear some azure gems, 
Small as might deck, upon a gala day. 
The forehead of a fay. 

In gardens you may note amid the dearth 
The crocus breaking earth j 

And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, 
The violet in its screen. 

But many gleams and shadows need must pass 
Along the budding grass, 
And weeks go by, before the enamored South 
Shall kiss the rose's mouth. 

Still there 's a sense of blossoms yet unborn 
In the sweet airs of morn ; 
One almost looks to see the very street 
Grow purple at his feet. 

At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, 
And brings, you know not why, 
A feeling as when eager crowds await 
Before a palace gate 



SPRING S 

Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would 

start, 
If from a beech's heart, 

A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, 
" Behold me ! I am May ! " 

Ah ! who would couple thoughts of war and crime 
With such a blessed time ! 
Who in the west wind's aromatic breath 
Could hear the call of Death ! 

Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake 
The voice of wood and brake, 
Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, 
A million men to arms. 

There shall be deeper hues upon her plains 
Than all her sunlit rains. 
And every gladdening influence around. 
Can summon from the ground. 

Oh ! standing on this desecrated mould, 
Methinks that I behold, 
Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, 
Spring kneeling on the sod. 

And calling, with the voice of all her rills. 
Upon the ancient hills 
To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves 
Who turn her meads to graves. 



POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



THE COTTON BOLL 

While I recline 

At ease beneath 

This immemorial pine, 

Small sphere ! 

(By dusky fingers brought this morning here 

And shown with boastful smiles), 

I turn thy cloven sheath, 

Through which the soft white fibres peer, 

That, with their gossamer bands, 

Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands. 

And slowly, thread by thread. 

Draw forth the folded strands. 

Than which the trembling line, 

By whose frail help yon startled spider fled 

Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed. 

Is scarce more fine ; 

And as the tangled skein 

Unravels in my hands. 

Betwixt me and the noonday light, 

A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles 

The landscape broadens on my sight, 

As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell 

Like that which, in the ocean shell. 

With mystic sound, 

Breaks down the' narrow walls that hem us round, 

And turns some city lane 



THE COTTON BOLL 

Into the restless main, 
With all his capes and isles ! 

Yonder bird, 

Which floats, as if at rest, 

In those blue tracts above the thunder, where 

No vapors cloud the stainless air, 

And never sound is heard. 

Unless at such rare time 

When, from the City of the Blest, 

Rings down some golden chime. 

Sees not from his high place 

So vast a cirque of summer space 

As widens round me in one mighty field. 

Which, rimmed by seas and sands, 

Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams 

Of gray Atlantic dawns ; 

And, broad as realms made up of many lands. 

Is lost afar 

Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns 

Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams 

Against the Evening Star ! 

And lo ! 

To the remotest point of sight, 

Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, 

The endless field is white ; 

And the whole landscape glows. 

For many a shining league away, 

With such accumulated light 



8 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! 

Nor lack there (for the vision grows, 

And the small charm within my hands — 

More potent even than the fabled one, 

Which oped whatever golden mystery 

Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, 

The curious ointment of the Arabian tale — 

Beyond all mortal sense 

Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see, 

Beneath its simple influence, 

As if with Uriel's crown, 

I stood in some great temple of the Sun, 

And looked, as Uriel, down !) 

Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green 

With all the common gifts of God, 

For temperate airs and torrid sheen 

Weave Edens of the sod ; 

Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold 

Broad rivers wind their devious ways ; 

A hundred isles in their embraces fold 

A hundred luminous bays ; 

And through yon purple haze 

Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud- 
crowned ; 

And, save where up their sides the ploughman 
creeps. 

An unhewn forest girds them grandly round, 
^n whose dark shades a future navy sleeps ! 
/ Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze 



THE COTTON BOLL 

Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth ! 
Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays 
Above it, as to light a favorite hearth ! 
Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the West 
See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers ! 
And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean's breast 
Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers ! 
Bear witness with me in my song of praise^ 
And tell the world that, since the world began, "^ 
No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, 
Or given a home to man ! 

But these are charms already widely blown ! 

His be the meed whose pencil's trace ' 

Hath touched our very swamps with grace, 

And round whose tuneful way 

All Southern laurels bloom ; 

The Poet of " The Woodlands," unto whom 

Alike are known 

The flute's low breathing and the trumpet's tone, 

And the soft west wind's sighs ; 

But who shall utter all the debt, 

O Land wherein all powers are met 

That bind a people's heart. 

The world doth owe thee at this day, 

And which it never can repay, 

Yet scarcely deigns to own ! 

Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing 

The source wherefrom doth spring 



10 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

That mighty commerce which, confined 

To the mean channels of no selfish mart, 

Goes out to every shore 

Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships 

That bear no thunders ; hushes hungry lips 

In alien lands ; 

Joins with a delicate web remotest strands ; 

And gladdening rich and poor, 

Doth gild Parisian domes. 

Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes, 

And only bounds its blessings by mankind ! 

In offices like these, thy mission lies, 

My Country ! and it shall not end 

As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend 

In blue above thee ; though thy foes be hard 

And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard 

Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark ; make thee great 

In white and bloodless state ; 

And haply, as the years increase — 

Still working through its humbler reach 

With that large wisdom which the ages teach — • 

Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace ! 

As men who labor in that mine 

Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed 

Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead, 

Hear the dull booming of the world of brine 

Above them, and a mighty mufiled roar 

Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on. 

And split the rock, and pile the massive ore, 

Or carve a niche, or shape the arched roof ; 



THE COTTON BOLL il 

So I, as calmly, weave my woof 

Of song, chanting the days to come, 

Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air 

Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawn 

Wakes from its starry silence to the hum 

Of many gathering armies. Still, 

In that we sometimes hear, 

Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe 

Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know 

The end must crown us, and a few brief years 

Dry all our tears, 

I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will 

Resigned, O Lord ! we cannot all forget 

That there is much even Victory must regret. 

And, therefore, not too long 

From the great burthen of our country's wrong 

Delay our just release ! 

And, if it may be, save 

These sacred fields of peace 

From stain of patriot or of hostile blood ! 

Oh, help us. Lord ! to roll the crimson flood 

Back on its course, and, while our banners wing 

Northward, strike with us ! till the Goth shall cling 

To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave 

Mercy ; and we shall grant it, and dictate 

The lenient future of his fate 

There, where some rotting ships and crumbling 

quays 
Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the West- 
ern seas. 



12 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



PRECEPTOR AMAT 

It is time (it was time long ago) I should sever 
This chain — why I wear it I know not — forever ! 
Yet I cling to the bond, e'en while sick of the mask 
I must wear, as of one whom his commonplace task 
And proof-armor of dullness have steeled to her 

charms ! 
Ah ! how lovely she looked as she flung from her 

arms, 
In heaps to this table (now starred with the stains 
Of her booty yet wet with those yesterday rains), 
These roses and lilies, and — what? let me see ! 
Then was off in a moment, but turned with a glee, 
That lit her sweet face as with moonlight, to say, 
As 't was almost too late for a lesson to-day, 
She meant to usurp, for this morning at least, 
My office of Tutor ; and instead of a feast 
Of such mouthfuls 2,^ pohiphloisboio thalasses^ 
With which I fed her, I should study the grasses 
(Love-grasses she called them), the buds, and the 

flowers 
Of which I know nothing ; and if "with my powers," 
I did not learn all she could teach in that time. 
And thank her, perhaps, in a sweet English rhyme, 
If I did not do this, and she flung back her hair, 
And shook her bright head with a menacing air. 
She 'd be — oh ! she 'd be — a real Saracen Omar 



PRECEPTOR AMAT 13 

To a certain much-valued edition of Homer ! 

But these flowers! I beUeve I could number as 

soon 
The shadowy thoughts of a last summer's noon, 
Or recall with their phases, each one after one, 
The clouds that came down to the death of the 

Sun, 
Cirrus, Stratus, or Nimbus, some evening last year, 
As unravel the web of one genus ! Why, there, 
As they lie by my desk in that glistering heap, 
All tangled together like dreams in the sleep 
Of a bliss-fevered heart, I might turn them and 

turn 
Till night, in a puzzle of pleasure, and learn 
Not a fact, not a secret I prize half so much. 
As, how rough is this leaf when I think of her 

touch. 
There 's one now blown yonder ! what can be its 

name ? 
A topaz wine-colored, the wine in a flame ; 
And another that 's hued like the pulp of a melon. 
But sprinkled all o'er as with seed-pearls of Ceylon ; 
And a third! its white petals just clouded with 

pink ! 
And a fourth, that blue star ! and then this, too ! 

I think 
If one brought me this moment an amethyst cup, 
From which, through a liquor of amber, looked up, 
With a glow as of eyes in their elfin-like lustre. 



14 fPOEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Stones culled from all lands in a sunshiny cluster, 
From the ruby that burns in the sands of Mysore 
To the beryl of Daunia, with gems from the core 
Of the mountains of Persia (I talk like a boy 
In the flush of some new, and yet half-tasted joy) ; 
But I think if that cup and its jewels together 
Were placed by the side of this child of the weather 
(This one which she touched with her mouth, and 

let slip 
From her fingers by chance, as her exquisite lip, 
With a music befitting the language divine, 
Gave the roll of the Greek's multitudinous line), 
I should take — not the gems — but enough ! let 

me shut 
In the blossom that woke it, my folly, and put 
Both away in my bosom — there, in a heart-niche, 
One shall outlive the other — is 't hard to tell 

which ? 
In the name of all starry and beautiful things. 
What is it ? the cross in the centre, these rings, 
And the petals that shoot in an intricate maze. 
From the disk which is lilac — or purple ? like rays 
In a blue Aureole ! 

And so now will she wot. 
When I sit by her side with my brows in a knot. 
And praise her so calmly, or chide her perhaps. 
If her voice falter once in its musical lapse. 
As I 've done, I confess, just to gaze at a flush 



PRECEPTOR AMAT 15 

In the white of her throat, or to watch the quick 

rush 
Of the tear she sheds smiling, as, drooping her 

curls 
O'er that book I keep shrined like a casket of 

pearls, 
She reads on in low tones of such tremulous sweet- 
ness. 
That (in spite of some faults) I am forced, in dis- 
creetness. 
To silence, lest mine, growing hoarse, should betray 
What I must not reveal — will she guess now, I 

say. 
How, for all his grave looks, the stern, passionless 

Tutor, 
With more than the love of her youthfulest suitor, 
Is hiding somewhere in the shroud of his vest. 
By a heart that is beating wild wings in its nest. 
This flower, thrown aside in the sport of a minute, 
And which he holds dear as though folded within it 
Lay the germ of the bliss that he dreams of ! Ah, 

me ! 
It is hard to love thus, yet to seem and to be 
A thing for indifference, faint praise, or cold blame, 
When you long (by the right of deep passion, the 

claim. 
On the loved of the loving, at least to be heard) 
To take the white hand, and with glance, touch, 
and word, 



i6 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Burn your way to the heart ! That her step on the 

stair ? 
Be still thou fond flutterer ! 

How little I care 
For your favorites, see ! they are all of them, look ! 
On the spot where they fell, and — but here is your 
book ! 



THE PROBLEM 

Not to win thy favor, maiden, not to steal away thy 

heart. 
Have I ever sought thy presence, ever stooped to 

any art ; 
Thou wast but a wildering problem, which I aimed 

to solve, and then 
Make it matter for my note-book, or a picture for 

my pen. 
So, I daily conned thee over, thinking it no danger- 
ous task, 
Peeping underneath thy lashes, peering underneath 

thy mask — 
For thou wear'st one — no denial ! there is much 

within thine eyes ; 
But those stars have other secrets than are patent 

in their skies. 
And I read thee, read thee closely^ every grace and 

every sin, 



THE PROBLEM 17 

Looked behind the outward seeming to the strange 

wild world within, 
Where thy future self is forming, where I saw — 

no matter what ! 
There was something less than angel, there was 

many an earthly spot ; 
Yet so beautiful thy errors that I had no heart for 

blame, 
And thy virtues made thee dearer than my dearest 

hopes of fame ; 
All so blended, that in wishing one peculiar trait 

removed, 
We indeed might make thee better, but less lovely 

and less loved. 
All my mind was in the study — so two thrilling 

fortnights passed — 
All my mind was in the study — till my heart was 

touched at last. 
Well ! and then the book was finished, the absorb- 
ing task was done, 
I awoke as one who had been dreaming in a noon- 
day sun ; 
With a fever on my forehead, and a throbbing in 

my brain. 
In my soul delirious wishes, in my heart a lasting 

pain ; 
Yet so hopeless, yet so cureless — as in every great 

despair — 
I was very calm and silent, and I never stooped to 

prayer, 



i8 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Like a sick man unattended, reckless of the coming 

death, 
Only for he knows it certain, and he feels no sis- 
ter's breath. 
All the while as by an Ate, with no pity in her face, 
Yet with eyes of witching beauty, and with form of 

matchless grace, 
I was haunted by thy presence, oh! for weary 

nights and days, 
I was haunted by thy spirit, I was troubled by thy 

gaze. 
And the question which to answer I had taxed a 

subtle brain. 
What thou art, and what thou wilt be, came again 

and yet again ; 
With its opposite deductions, it recurred a thou- 
sand times, 
Like a coward's apprehensions, like a madman's 

favorite rhymes. 
But .to-night my thoughts flow calmer — in thy room 

I think I stand, 
See a fair white page before thee, and a pen within 

thy hand j 
And thy fingers sweep the paper, and a light is in 

thine eyes. 
Whilst I read thy secret fancies, whilst I hear thy 

secret sighs. 
What they are I will not whisper, those are lovely, 

these are deep, 



THE PROBLEM 19 

But one name is left unwritten, that is only breathed 

in sleep. 
Is it wonder that my passion bursts at once from 

out its nest ? 
I have bent my knee before thee, and my love is all 

confessed ; 
Though I knew that name unwritten was another 

name than mine, 
Though I felt those sighs half murmured what I 

could but half divine. 
Aye ! I hear thy haughty answer ! Aye ! I see thy 

proud lip curl ! 
"What presumption, and what folly ! " why, I only 

love a girl 
With some very winning graces, with some very 

noble traits. 
But no better than a thousand who have bent to 

humbler fates. 
That I ask not ; I have, maiden, just as haught a 

soul as thine ; 
If thou think' st thy place above me, thou shalt 

never stoop to mine. 
Yet as long as blood runs redly, yet as long as 

mental worth 
Is a nobler gift than fortune, is a holier thing than 

birth, 
I will claim the right to utter, to the high and to 

the low, 
That I love them, or I hate them, that I am a 

friend or foe. 



20 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Nor shall any slight unman me j I have yet some 

little strength, 
Yet my song shall sound as sweetly, yet a power be 

mine at length ! 
Then, oh, then ! but moans are idle — hear me, 

pitying saints above ! 
With a chaplet on my forehead, I will justify my love. 
And perhaps when thou art leaning on some less 

devoted breast, 
Thou shalt murmur, " He was worthier than my 

blinded spirit guessed." 



A YEAR'S COURTSHIP 

I SAW her, Harry, first, in March — 
You know the street that leadeth down 

By the old bridge's crumbling arch ? — 
Just where it leaves the dusty town 

A lonely house stands grim and dark — 
You Ve seen it ? then I need not say 

How quaint the place is — did you mark 
An ivied window ? Well ! one day, 

I, chasing some forgotten dream, 

And in a poet's idlest mood, 
Caught, as I passed, a white hand's gleam — 

A shutter opened — there she stood 



i 



A YEAR'S COURTSHIP 21 

Training the ivy to its prop. 

Two dark eyes and a brow of snow 
Flashed down upon me — did I stop ? — 

She says I did — I do not know. 

But all that day did something glow 

Just where the heart beats ; frail and slight, 

A germ had slipped its shell, and now 
Was pushing softly for the light. 

And April saw me at her feet, 

Dear month of sunshine and of rain ! 

My very fears were sometimes sweet, 
And hope was often touched with pain. 

For she was frank, and she was coy, 

A willful April in her ways ; 
And in a dream of doubtful joy 

I passed some truly April days. 

May came, and on that arch, sweet mouth, 

The smile was graver in its play, 
And, softening with the softening South, 

My April melted into May. 

She loved me, yet my heart would doubt. 
And ere I spoke the month was June — 

One warm still night we wandered out 
To watch a slowly setting moon. 



22 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Something which I saw not — my eyes 
Were not on heaven — a star, perchance, 

Or some bright drapery of the skies, 
Had caught her earnest, upper glance. 

And as she paused — Hal ! we have played 

Upon the very spot — a fir 
Just touched me with its dreamy shade, 

But the full moonlight fell on her — 

And as she paused — I know not why — 
I longed to speak, yet could not speak ; 

The bashful are the boldest — I ■ — 
I stooped and gently kissed her cheek. 

A murmur (else some fragrant air 

Stirred softly) and the faintest start — 

O Hal ! we were the happiest pair ! 
O Hal ! I clasped her heart to heart ! 

And kissed away some tears that gushed ; 

But how she trembled, timid dove, 
When my soul broke its silence, flushed 

With a whole burning June of love. 

Since then a happy year hath sped 

Through months that seemed all June and May, 
And soon a March sun, overhead. 

Will usher in the crowning day. 



SERENADE 23 

Twelve blessed moons that seemed to glow 
All summer, Hal ! — my peerless Kate ! 

She is the dearest — " Angel ? " — no ! 
Thank God ! — but you shall see her — wait. 

So all is told ! I count on thee 
To see the Priest, Hal ! Pass the wine! 

Here 's to my darling wife to be ! 

And here 's to — when thou find'st her — thine ! 



SERENADE 

Hide, happy damask, from the stars, 

What sleep enfolds behind your veil, 
But open to the fairy cars 

On which the dreams of midnight sail ; 
And let the zephyrs rise and fall 

About her in the curtained gloom, 
And then return to tell me all 

The silken secrets of the room. 

Ah, dearest ! may the elves that sway 

Thy fancies come from emerald plots. 
Where they have dozed and dreamed all day 

In hearts of blue forget-me-nots. 
And one perhaps shall whisper thus : 

Awake ! and light the darkness. Sweet ! 
While thou art reveling with us, 

He watches in the lonely street. 



24 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



YOUTH AND MANHOOD 

Another year ! a short one, if it flow 

Like that just past, 
And I shall stand — if years can make me so — 

A man at last. 

Yet, while the hours permit me, I would pause 

And contemplate 
The lot whereto unalterable laws 

Have bound my fate. 

Yet, from the starry regions of my youth, 

The empyreal height 
Where dreams are happiness, and feeling truth. 

And life delight — 

From that ethereal and serene abode 

My soul would gaze 
Downward upon the wide and \\dnding road, 

Where manhood plays ; 

Plays with the baubles and the gauds of earth — 

Wealth, power, and fame — 
Nor knows that in the twelvemonth after birth 

He did the same. 

Where the descent begins, through long defiles 
I see them wind : 



YOUTH AND MANHOOD 25 

And some are looking down with hopeful smiles, 
And some are — blind. 



And farther on a gay and glorious green 

Dazzles the sight, 
While noble forms are moving o'er the scene, 

Like things of light. 

Towers, temples, domes of perfect symmetry 

Rise broad, and high, 
With pinnacles among the clouds ; ah, me ! 

None touch the sky. 

None pierce the pure and lofty atmosphere 

Which I breathe now, 
And the strong spirits that inhabit there, 

Live — God sees how. 

Sick of the very treasure which they heap ; 

Their tearless eyes 
Sealed ever in a heaven-forgetting sleep. 

Whose dreams are lies ; 

And so, a motley, unattractive throng, 

They toil and plod, 
Dead to the holy ecstasies of song, 

To love, and God. 

Dear God ! if that I may not keep through life 
My trust, my truth, 



26 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And that I must, in yonder endless strife, 
Lose faith with youth ; 

If the same toil which indurates the hand 

Must steel the heart, 
Till, in the wonders of the ideal land, 

It have no part j 

Oh ! take me hence ! I would no longer stay 

Beneath the sky ] 
Give me to chant one pure and deathless lay. 

And let me die ! 



HARK TO THE SHOUTING WIND 

Hark to the shouting Wind 1 

Hark to the flying Rain ! 
And I care not though I never see 

A bright blue sky again. 

There are thoughts in my breast to-day 
That are not for human speech ; 

But I hear them in the driving storm, 
And the roar upon the beach. 

And oh, to be with that ship 

That I watch through the blinding brine ! 
O Wind ! for thy sweep of land and sea ! 

O Sea ! for a voice like thine ! 



TOO LONG, O SPIRIT OF STORM 27 

Shout on, thou pitiless Wind, 
To the frightened and flying Rain ! 

I care not though I never see 
A calm blue sky again. 



TOO LONG, O SPIRIT OF STORM 

Too long, O Spirit of Storm, 

Thy lightning sleeps in its sheath ! 

I am sick to the soul of yon pallid sky, 
And the moveless sea beneath. 

Come down in thy strength on the deep ! 

Worse dangers there are in life. 
When the waves are still, and the skies look fair, 

Than in their wildest strife. 

A friend I knew, whose days 

Were as calm as this sky overhead ; 

But one blue morn that was fairest of all, 
The heart in his bosom fell dead. 

And they thought him alive while he walked 
The streets that he walked in youth — 

Ah ! little they guessed the seeming man 
Was a soulless corpse in sooth. 

Come down in thy strength, O Storm ! 
And lash the deep till it raves I 



28 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

I am sick to the soul of that quiet sea, 
Which hides ten thousand graves. 



THE LILY CONFIDANTE 

Lily ! lady of the garden ! 

Let me press my lip to thine ! 
Love must tell its story, Lily ! 

Listen thou to mine. 

Two I choose to know the secret ■ — 
Thee, and yonder wordless flute ; 

Dragons watch me, tender Lily, 
And thou must be mute. 

There 's a maiden, and her name is . 

Hist ! was that a rose-leaf fell ? 
See, the rose is listening, Lily, 

And the rose may tell. 

Lily-browed and lily-hearted, 

She is very dear to me ; 
Lovely? yes, if being lovely 

Is — resembling thee. 

Six to half a score of summers 
Make the sweetest of the "teens" 

Not too young to guess, dear Lily, 
What a lover means. 



THE LILY CONFIDANTE 29 

Laughing girl, and thoughtful woman, 

I am puzzled how to woo — 
Shall I praise, or pique her, Lily ? 

Tell me what to do. 

" Silly lover, if thy Lily 
Like her sister lilies be, 
Thou must woo, if thou wouldst wear her, 
With a simple plea. 

" Love 's the lover's only magic, 
Truth the very subtlest art ; 
Love that feigns, and lips that flatter, 
Win no modest heart. 

" Like the dewdrop in my bosom, 
Be thy guileless language, youth ; 
Falsehood buyeth falsehood only. 
Truth must purchase truth. 

" As thou talkest at the fireside, 
With the little children by — 
As thou prayest in the darkness, 
When thy God is nigh— 

" With a speech as chaste and gentle. 
And such meanings as become 
Ear of child, or ear of angel. 
Speak, or be thou dumb. 



30 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

" Woo her thus, and she shall give thee 
Of her heart the sinless whole, 
All the girl within her bosom. 
And her woman's soul." 



THE STREAM IS FLOWING FROM THE 
WEST 

The stream is flowing from the west ; 

As if it poured from yonder skies, 
It wears upon its rippling breast 

The sunset's golden dyes ; 
And bearing onward to the sea, 
'T will clasp the isle that holdeth thee. 

I dip my hand within the wave ; 

Ah ! how impressionless and cold ! 
I touch it with my lip, and lave 

My forehead in the gold. 
It is a trivial thought, but sweet, 
Perhaps the wave will kiss thy feet. 

Alas ! I leave no trace behind — 
As little on the senseless stream 

As on thy heart, or on thy mind ; 
Which was the simpler dream, 

To win that warm, wild love of thine, 

Or make the water whisper mine ? 



vox ET PR^TEREA NIHIL 31 

Dear stream ! some moons must wax and wane 

Ere I again shall cross thy tide, 
And then, perhaps, a viewless chain 

Will drag me to her side, 
To love with all my spirit's scope, 
To wish, do everything but — hope. 



VOX ET PR^TEREA NIHIL 

I 'vE been haunted all night, I 've been haunted all 

day, 
By the ghost of a song, by the shade of a lay, 
That with meaningless words and profusion of 

rhyme. 
To a dreamy and musical rhythm keeps time. 
A simple, but still a most magical strain, 
Its dim monotones have bewildered my brain 
With a specious and cunning appearance of thought, 
I seem to be catching but never have caught. 

I know it embodies some very sweet things, 
And can almost divine the low burden it sings ; 
But again, and again, and still ever again, 
It has died on my ear at the touch of my pen. 
And so it keeps courting and shunning my quest. 
As a bird that has just been aroused from her nest. 
Too fond to depart, and too frightened to stay, 
Now circles about you, now flutters away. 



32 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Oh ! give me fit words for that exquisite song, 
And thou couldst not, proud beauty ! be obdurate 

long; 
It would come like the voice of a saint from above. 
And win thee to kindness, and melt thee to love. 
Not gilded with fancy, nor frigid with art. 
But simple as feeling, and warm as the heart, 
It would murmur my name with so charming a tone, 
As would almost persuade thee to wish it thine own. 



MADELINE 

O LADY ! if, until this hour, 

I 've gazed in those bewildering eyes, 
Yet never owned their touching power. 

But when thou couldst not hear my sighs ; 
It has not been that love has slept 

One single moment in my soul, 
Or that on lip or look I kept 

A stern and stoical control ; 
But that I saw, but that I felt. 

In every tone and glance of thine, 
Whate'er they spoke, where'er they dwelt. 

How small, how poor a part was mine ; 
And that I deeply, dearly knew, 

That hidden, hopeless love confessed, 
The fatal words would lose me, too. 

Even the weak friendship I possessed. 



MADELINE 33 

And so, I masked my secret well ; 

The very love within my breast 
Became the strange, but potent spell 

By which I forced it into rest. 
Yet there were times — I scarce know how 

These eager lips refrained to speak, — 
Some kindly smile would light thy brow, 

And I grew passionate and weak ; 
The secret sparkled at my eyes. 
And love but half repressed its sighs, — 
Then had I gazed an instant more, 

Or dwelt one moment on that brow, 
I might have changed the smile it wore, 

To what perhaps it weareth now, 
And spite of all I feared to meet. 
Confessed that passion at thy feet. 
To save my heart, to spare thine own, 

There was one remedy alone. 
I fled, I shunned thy very touch, — 
It cost me much, O God ! how much ! 
But if some burning tears were shed, 

Lady ! I let them freely flow ; 
At least, they left unbreathed, unsaid, 

A worse and wilder woe. 

But now, — jtow that we part indeed, 
And that I may not think as then, 

That as I wish, or as I need, 
I may return again, — 



34 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Now that for months, perhaps for years — 

I see no limit in my fears — 

My home shall be some distant spot, 

Where thou — where even thy name is not, 

And since I shall not see the frown, 

Such wild, mad language must bring down, 

Could I — albeit I may not sue 

In hope to bend thy steadfast will — 
Could I have breathed this word, adieu. 

And kept my secret still ? 

Doubtless thou know'st the Hebrew story — 

The tale 's with me a favorite one — 
How Raphael left the Courts of Glory, 

And walked with Judah's honored Son ; 
And how the twain together dwelt. 

And how they talked upon the road. 
How often too they must have knelt 

As equals to the same kind God ; 
And still the mortal never guessed, 
How much and deeply he was blessed. 
Till when — the Angel's mission done — 

The spell which drew him earthwards, riven 
The lover saved — the maiden won — 

He plumed again his wings for Heaven ; 
O Madeline ! as unaware 
Thou hast been followed everywhere, 

And girt and guarded by a love, 
As warm, as tender in its care, 



MADELINE 35 

As pure, ay, powerful in prayer, 

As any saint above ! 
Like the bright inmate of the skies, 
It only looked with friendly eyes, 
And still had worn the illusive guise. 

And thus at least been half concealed ; 
But at this parting, painful hour. 
It spreads its wings, unfolds its power, 

And stands, like Raphael, revealed. 

More, Lady ! I would wish to speak, — 
But it were vain, and words are weak. 
And now that I have bared my breast, 
Perchance thou wilt infer the rest. 
So, so, farewell ! I need not say 

I look, I ask for no reply. 
The cold and scarcely pitying " nay " 

I read in that unmelted eye ; 
Yet one dear favor, let me pray ! 

Days, months, however slow to me, 
Must drag at last their length away. 

And I return — if not to thee — 
At least to breathe the same sweet air 
That wooes thy lips and waves thy hair. 
Oh, then ! — these daring lines forgot — 
Look, speak, as thou hadst read them not. 
So, Lady, may I still retain 
A right I would not lose again. 
For all that gold or guilt can buy. 
Or all that Heaven itself deny. 



36 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

A right such love may justly claim, 
Of seeing thee in friendship's name. 
Give me but this, and still at whiles, 
A portion of thy faintest smiles. 

It were enough to bless ; 
I may not, dare not ask for more 
Than boon so rich, and yet so poor, 

But I should die with less. 

A DEDICATION 

TO K. S. G. 

Fair Saxon, in my lover's creed, 

My love were smaller than your meed, 

And you might justly deem it slight. 

As wanting truth as well as sight. 

If, in that image which is shrined 

Where thoughts are sacred, you could find 

A single charm, or more or less, 

Than you to all kind eyes possess. 

To me, even in the happiest dreams, 

Where, flushed with love's just dawning gleams, 

My hopes their radiant wings unfurl, 

You 're but a simple English girl, 

No fairer, grace for grace arrayed. 

Than many a simple Southern maid j 

With faults enough to make the good 

Seem sweeter far than else it would; 



i 



A DEDICATION 37 

Frank in your anger and your glee, 

And true as English natures be, 

Yet not without some maiden art 

Which hides a loving English heart. 

Still there are moments, brief and bright, 

When fancy, by a poet's light, 

Beholds you clothed with loftier charms 

Than love e'er gave to mortal arms. 

A spell is woven on the air 

From your brown eyes and golden hair, 

And all at once you seem to stand 

Before me as your native land, 

With all her greatness in your guise, 

And all her glory in your eyes ; 

And sometimes, as if angels sung, 

I hear her poets on your tongue. 

And, therefore, I, who from a boy 

Have felt an almost English joy 

In England's undecaying might. 

And England's love of truth and right. 

Next to my own young country's fame 

Holding her honor and her name, 

I — who, though born where not a vale 

Hath ever nursed a nightingale, 

Have fed my muse with English song 

Until her feeble wing grew strong — 

Feel, while with all the reverence meet 

I lay this volume at your feet, 

As if through your dear self I pay, 

For many a deep and deathless lay, 



38 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

For noble lessons nobly taught, 

For tears, for laughter, and for thought, 

A portion of the mighty debt 

We owe to Shakespeare's England yet ! 



KATIE 

It may be through some foreign grace, 

And unfamiliar charm of face ; 

It may be that across the foam 

Which bore her from her childhood's home, 

By some strange spell, my Katie brought, 

Along with English creeds and thought — 

Entangled in her golden hair — 

Some English sunshine, warmth, and air ! 

I cannot tell — but here to-day, 

A thousand billowy leagues away 

From that green isle whose twilight skies 

No darker are than Katie's eyes. 

She seems to me, go where she will, 

An English girl in England still ! 

I meet her on the dusty street. 
And daisies spring about her feet ; 
Or, touched to life beneath her tread, 
An English cowslip lifts its head ; 
And, as to do her grace, rise up 
The primrose and the buttercup ! 



KATIE 39 

I roam with her through fields of cane, 

And seem to stroll an English lane, 

Which, white with blossoms of the May, 

Spreads its green carpet in her way ! 

As fancy wills, the path beneath 

Is golden gorse, or purple heath : 

And now we hear in woodlands dim 

Their unarticulated hymn, 

Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, 

Now sink in mats of clover sweet. 

Or see before us from the lawn 

The lark go up to greet the dawn ! 

All birds that love the English sky 

Throng round my path when she is by : 

The blackbird from a neighboring thorn 

With music brims the cup of morn. 

And in a thick, melodious rain 

The mavis pours her mellow strain ! 

But only when my Katie's voice 

Makes all the listening woods rejoice 

I hear — with cheeks that flush and pale — 

The passion of the nightingale ! 

Anon the pictures round her change. 
And through an ancient town w^e range. 
Whereto the shadowy memory clings 
Of one of England's Saxon kings. 
And which to shrine his fading fame 
Still keeps his ashes and his name. 



40 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Quaint houses rise on either hand, 

But still the airs are fresh and bland, 

As if their gentle wings caressed 

Some new-born village of the West. 

A moment by the Norman tower 

We pause ; it is the Sabbath hour ! 

And o'er the city sinks and swells 

The chime of old St. Mary's bells, 

Which still resound in Katie's ears 

As sweet as when in distant years 

She heard them peal with jocund din 

A merry English Christmas in ! 

We pass the abbey's ruined arch, 

And statelier grows my Katie's march, 

As round her, wearied with the taint 

Of Transatlantic pine and paint. 

She sees a thousand tokens cast 

Of England's venerable Past ! , 

Our reverent footsteps lastly claims 

The younger chapel of St. James, 

Which, though, as English records run, 

Not old, had seen full many a sun, 

Ere to the cold December gale 

The thoughtful Pilgrim spread his sail. 

There Katie in her childish days 

Spelt out her prayers and lisped her praise, 

And doubtless, as her beauty grew. 

Did much as other maidens do — 

Across the pews and down the aisle 

Sent many a beau-bewildering smile. 



KATIE 41 

And to subserve her spirit's need 

Learned other things beside the creed ! 

There, -too, to-day her knee she bows, 

And by her one whose darker brows 

Betray the Southern heart that burns 

Beside her, and which only turns 

Its thoughts to Heaven in one request, 

Not all unworthy to be blest, 

But rising from an earthlier pain 

Than might beseem a Christian fane. 

Ah ! can the guileless maiden share 

The wish that lifts that passionate prayer ? 

Is all at peace that breast within ? 

Good angels ! warn her of the sin ! 

Alas ! what boots it ? who can save 

A willing victim of the wave ? 

Who cleanse a soul that loves its guilt ? 

Or gather wine when wine is spilt ? 

We quit the holy house and gain 
The open air ; then, happy twain, 
Adown familiar streets we go. 
And now and then she turns to show, 
With fears that all is changing fast, 
Some spot that 's sacred to her Past. 
Here by this way, through shadows cool, 
A little maid, she tripped to school ; 
And there each morning used to stop 
Before a wonder of a shop 



42 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Where, built of apples and of pears, 
Rose pyramids of golden spheres ; 
While, dangling in her dazzled sight, 
Ripe cherries cast a crimson light, 
And made her think of elfin lamps, 
And feast and sport in fairy camps. 
Whereat, upon her royal throne 
(Most richly carved in cherry-stone), 
Titania ruled, in queenly state, 
The boisterous revels of the fete ! 
'T was yonder, with their " horrid " noise, 
Dismissed from books, she met the boys, 
Who, with a barbarous scorn of girls, 
Glanced slightly at her sunny curls. 
And laughed and leaped as reckless by 
As though no pretty face were nigh ! 
But — here the maiden grows demure — 
Indeed she 's not so very sure. 
That in a year, or haply twain, 
Who looked e'er failed to look again. 
And sooth to say, I little doubt 
(Some azure day, the truth will out !) 
That certain baits in certain eyes 
Caught many an unsuspecting prize ; 
And somewhere underneath these eaves 
A budding flirt put forth its leaves ! 

Has not the sky a deeper blue. 
Have not the trees a greener hue, 



KATIE 43 

And bend they not with lordlier grace 
And nobler shapes above the place 
Where on one cloudless winter morn 
My Katie to this life was born ? 
Ah, folly ! long hath fled the hour 
When love to sight gave keener power, 
And lovers looked for special boons 
In brighter flowers and larger moons. 
But wave the foliage as it may, 
And let the sky be ashen gray, 
Thus much at least a manly youth 
•May hold — and yet not blush — as truth : 
If near that blessed spot of earth 
Which. saw the cherished maiden's birth 
No softer dews than usual rise, 
And life there keeps its wonted guise. 
Yet not the less that spot may seem 
As lovely as a poet's dream ; 
And should a fervid faith incline 
To make thereof a sainted shrine, 
Who may deny that round us throng 
A hundred earthly creeds as wrong, 
But meaner far, which yet unblam.ed 
Stalk by us and are not ashamed ? 
So, therefore, Katie, as our stroll 
Ends at this portal, while you roll 
Those lustrous eyes to catch each ray 
That may recall some vanished day, 
I — let them jeer and laugh who will — 
Stoop down and kiss the sacred sill ! 



44 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

So strongly sometimes on the sense 
These fancies hold their influence, 
That in long well-known streets I stray 
Like one who fears to lose his way. 
The stranger, I, the native, she, 
Myself, not Kate, had crossed the sea ; 
And changing place, and mixing times, 
I walk in unfamiliar climes ! 
These houses, free to every breeze 
That blows from warm Floridian seas, 
Assume a massive English air, 
And close around an English square ; 
While, if I issue from the town, 
An English hill looks greenly down, 
Or round me rolls an English park, 
And in the Broad I hear the Larke ! 
Thus when, where woodland violets hide, 
I rove with Katie at my side. 
It scarce would seem amiss to say : 
" Katie ! my home lies far away. 
Beyond the pathless waste of brine, 
In a young land of palm and pine ! 
There, by the tropic heats, the soul 
Is touched as if with living coal. 
And glows with such a fire as none 
Can feel beneath a Northern sun. 
Unless — my Katie's heart attest ! — 
'T is kindled in an English breast ! 



WHY SILENT 45 

Such is the land in which I live, 

And, Katie ! such the soul I give. 

Come ! ere another morning beam, 

We '11 cleave the sea with wings of steam ; 

And soon, despite of storm or calm. 

Beneath my native groves of palm, 

Kind friends shall greet, with joy and pride, 

The Southron and his English bride ! " 



WHY SILENT 

Why am I silent from year to year ? 

Needs must I sing on these blue March days ? 
What will you say, when I tell you here, 

That already, I think, for a little praise, 
I have paid too dear ? 

For, I know not why, when I tell my thought, 

It seems as though I fling it away ; 
And the charm wherewith a fancy is fraught. 

When secret, dies with the fleeting lay 
Into which it is wrought. 

So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings 
But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis ; 

And thus I retain my loveliest things. 

While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss 
What a poet sings. 



46 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

TWO PORTRAITS 
I 

You say, as one who shapes a life, 
That you will never be a wife, 

And, laughing lightly, ask my aid 
To paint your future as a maid. 

This is the portrait ; and I take 
The softest colors for your sake : 

The springtime of your soul is dead, 
And forty years have bent your head ; 

The lines are firmer round your mouth, 

But still its smile is like the South. 

Your eyes, grown deeper, are not sad, 
Yet never more than gravely glad ; 

And the old charm still lurks within 
The cloven dimple of your chin. 

Some share, perhaps, of youthful gloss 
Your cheek hath shed j but still across 

The delicate ear are folded down 
Those silken locks of chestnut brown j 



TWO PORTRAITS 47 

Though here and there a thread of gray 
Steals through thera like a lunar ray. 

One might suppose your life had passed 
Unvexed by any troubling blast j 

And such — for all that I foreknow — 
May be the truth ! The deeper woe ! 

A loveless heart is seldom stirred ; 
And sorrow shuns the mateless bird j 

But ah ! through cares alone we reach 
The happiness which mocketh speech ; 

In the white courts beyond the stars 
The noblest brow is seamed with scars ; 

And they on earth who 've wept the most 
Sit highest of the heavenly host. 

Grant that your maiden life hath sped 
In music o'er a golden bed, 

With rocks, and winds, and storms at truce, 
And not without a noble use ; 

Yet are you happy ? In your air 
I see a nameless want appear, 



48 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And a faint shadow on your cheek 
Tells what the lips refuse to speak. 

You have had all a maid could hope 
In the most cloudless horoscope : 

The strength that cometh from above ; 
A Christian mother's holy love ; 

And always at your soul's demand 
A brother's, sister's heart and hand. 

Small need your heart hath had to roam 
Beyond the circle of your home ; 

And yet upon your wish attends 
A loving throng of genial friends. 

What, in a lot so sweet as this, 
Is wanting to complete your bliss ? 

And to what secret shall I trace 

The clouds that sometimes cross your face, 

And that sad look which now and then 
Comes, disappears, and comes again. 

And dies reluctantly away 

In those clear eyes of azure gray.? 



TWO PORTRAITS 49 

At best, and after all, the place 
You fill with such a serious grace, 

Hath much to try a woman's heart, 
And you but play a painful part. 

The world around, with little ruth, 

Still laughs at maids who have not youth, 

And, right or wrong, the old maid rests 
The victim of its paltry jests, 

And still is doomed to meet and bear 
Its pitying smile or furtive sneer. 

These are indeed but petty things. 

And yet they touch some hearts like stings. 

But I acquit you of the shame 
Of being unresisting game ; 

For you are of such tempered clay 
As turns far stronger shafts away, 

And all that foes or fools could guide 
Would only curl that lip of pride. 

How then, O weary one ! explain 
The sources of that hidden pain ? 



so POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Alas ! you have divined at length 
How little you have used your strength, 

Which, with who knows what human good, 
Lies buried in that maidenhood. 



Where, as amid a field of flowers, 

You have but played with April showers. 

Ah ! we would wish the world less fair, 
If Spring alone adorned the year, 

And Autumn came not with its fruit, 
And Autumn hymns were ever mute. 

So I remark without surprise 
That, as the unvarying season flies, 

From day to night and night to day. 
You sicken of your endless May. 

In this poor life we may not cross 
One virtuous instinct without loss, 

And the soul grows not to its height 
Till love calls forth its utmost might. 

Not blind to all you might have been. 
And with some consciousness of sin — 



TWO PORTRAITS 51 

Because with love you sometimes played, 
And choice, not fate, hath kept you maid — 

You feel that you must pass from earth 
But half-acquainted with its worth, 

And that within your heart are deeps 
In which a nobler woman sleeps ; 

That not the maiden, but the wife 
Grasps the whole lesson of a life, 

While such as you but sit and dream 
Along the surface of its stream. 

And doubtless sometimes, all unsought, /\ 
There comes upon your hour of thought, 

Despite the struggles of your will, 
A sense of something absent still ; 

And then you cannot help but yearn 
To love and be beloved in turn. 

As they are loved, and love, who live 
As love were all that life could give ; 

And in a transient clasp or kiss 
Crowd an eternity of bliss ; 



52 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

They who of every mortal joy 

Taste always twice, nor feel them cloy, 

Or, if woes come, in Sorrow's hour 
Are strengthened by a double power. 



II 

Here ends my feeble sketch of what 
Might, but will never be your lot ; 

And I foresee how oft these rhymes 
Shall make you smile in after-times. 

If I have read your nature right. 
It only waits a spark of light ; 

And when that comes, as come it must, 
It will not fall on arid dust. 

Nor yet on that which breaks to flame 
In the first blush of maiden shame ; 

But on a heart which, even at rest, 
Is warmer than an April nest, 

Where, settling soft, that spark shall creep 
About as gently as a sleep ; 



TWO PORTRAITS 53 

Still stealing on with pace so slow 
Yourself will scarcely feel the glow, 

Till after many and many a day, 
Although no gleam its course betray, 

It shall attain the inmost shrine, 
And wrap it in a fire divine ! 

I know not when or whence indeed 
Shall fall and burst the burning seed, 

But oh ! once kindled, it will blaze, 
I know, forever ! • By its rays 

You will perceive, with subtler eyes, 
The meaning in the earth and skies, 

Which, with their animated chain 

Of grass and flow^ers, and sun and rain, 

Of green below, and blue above. 
Are but a t}^e of married love. 

You wall perceive that in the breast 
The germs of many virtues rest. 

Which, ere they feel a lover's breath, 
Lie in a temporary death ; 



54 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And till the heart is wooed and won 
It is an earth without a sun. 



Ill 

But now, stand forth as sweet as life ! 
And let me paint you as a wife. 

I note some changes in your face, 
And in your mien a graver grace j 

Yet the calm forehead lightly bears 
Its weight of twice a score of years ; 

And that one love which on this earth 
Can wake the heart to all its worth, 

And to their height can lift and bind 
The powers of soul, and sense, and mind, 

Hath not allowed a charm to fade — 
And the wife 's lovelier than the maid. 

An air of still, though bright repose 
Tells that a tender hand bestows 

All that a generous manhood may 
To make your life one bridal day, 



TWO PORTRAITS 55 

While the kind eyes betray no less, 
In their blue depths of tenderness, 

That you have learned the truths which lie 
Behind that holy mystery, 

Which, with its blisses and its woes, 
Nor man nor maiden ever knows. 

If now, as to the eyes of one 

Whose glance not even thought can shun, 

Your soul lay open to my view, 
I, looking all its nature through, 

Could see no incompleted part, 

For the whole woman warms your heart. 

I cannot tell how many dead 
You number in the cycles fied. 

And you but look the more serene 
For all the griefs you may have seen, 

As you had gathered from the dust 

The flowers of Peace, and Hope, and Trust. 

Your smile is even sweeter now 
Than when it lit your maiden brow, 



56 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And that which wakes this gentler charm 
Coos at this moment on your arm. 

Your voice was always soft in youth, 
And had the very sound of truth, 

But never were its tones so mild 
Until you blessed your earliest child ; 

And when to soothe some little wrong 
It melts into a mother's song. 

The same strange sweetness which in years 
Long vanished filled the eyes with tears, 

And (even when mirthful) gave always 
A pathos to your girlish lays. 

Falls, with perchance a deeper thrill. 
Upon the breathless listener still. 

I cannot guess in what fair spot 

The chance of Time hath fixed your lot, 

Nor can I name what manly breast 
Gives to that head a welcome rest j 

I cannot tell if partial Fate 

Hath made you poor, or rich, or great ; 



LA BELLE JUIVE 57 

But oh ! whatever be your place, 
I never saw a form or face 



To which more plainly hath been lent 
The blessing of a full content ! 



LA BELLE JUIVE 

Is it because your sable hair 
Is folded over brows that wear 
At times a too imperial air j 

Or is it that the thoughts which rise 
In those dark orbs do seek disguise 
Beneath the lids of Eastern eyes ; 

That choose whatever pose or place 
May chance to please, in you I trace 
The noblest woman of your race ? 

The crowd is sauntering at its ease, 
And humming like a hive of bees — 
You take your seat and touch the keys 

I do not hear the giddy throng ; 
The sea avenges Israel's wrong, 
And on the wind floats Miriam's song ! 



58 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

You join me with a stately grace ; 

Music to Poesy gives place ; 

Some grand emotion lights your face : 

At once I stand by Mizpeh's walls : 
With smiles the martyred daughter falls, 
And desolate are Mizpeh's halls! 

Intrusive babblers come between ; 
With calm, pale, brow and lofty mien, 
You thread the circle like a queen ! 

Then sweeps the royal Esther by ; 
The deep devotion in her eye 
Is looking " If I die, I die ! " 

You stroll the garden's flowery walks ; 
The plants to me are grainless stalks. 
And Ruth to old Naomi talks. 

Adopted child of Judah's creed, 
Like Judah's daughters, true at need, 
I see you mid the alien seed. 

I watch afar the gleaner sweet ; 
I wake like Boaz in the wheat, 
And find you lying at my feet ! 



AN EXOTIC 59 

My feet ! Oh ! if the spell that lures 

My heart through all these dreams endures, 

How soon shall I be stretched at yours ! 



AN EXOTIC 

Not in a climate near the sun 

Did the cloud with it5 trailing fringes float, 
Whence, white as the down of an angel's plume, 

Fell the snow of her brow and throat. 

And the ground had been rich for a thousand years 
With the blood of heroes, and sages, and kings, 

Where the rose that blooms in her exquisite cheek 
Unfolded the flush of its wings. 

On a land where the faces are fair, though pale 
As a moonlit mist when the winds are still. 

She breaks like a morning in Paradise 
Through the palms of an orient hill. 

Her beauty, perhaps, were all too bright. 

But about her there broods some delicate spell. 

Whence the wondrous charm of the girl grows soft 
As the light in an English dell. 

There is not a story of faith and truth 
On the starry scroll of her country's fame, 



6o POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

But has helped to shape her stately mien, 
And to touch her soul with flame. . 



I sometimes forget, as she sweeps me a bow, 
That I gaze on a simple English maid. 

And I bend my head, as if to a queen 
Who is courting my lance and blade. 

Once, as we read, in a curtained niche, 
A poet who sang of her sea-throned isle. 

There was something of Albion's mighty Bess 
In the flash of her haughty smile. 

She seemed to gather from every age 
All the greatness of England about her there. 

And my fancy wove a royal crown 
Of the dusky gold of her hair. 

But it was no queen to whom that day. 
In the dim green shade of a trellised vine, 

I whispered a hope that had somewhat to do 
With a small white hand in mine. 

The Tudor had vanished, and, as I spoke, 

'T was herself looked out of her frank brown eye, 

And an answer was burning upon her face, 
Ere I caught the low reply. 

What was it ! Nothing the world need know — 
The stars saw our parting ! Enough, that then 



THE ROSEBUDS 6i 

I walked from the porch with the tread of a king, 
And she was a queen again ! 



THE ROSEBUDS 

Yes, in that dainty ivory shrine. 
With those three pallid buds, I twine 
And fold away a dream divine ! 

One night they lay upon a breast 
Where Love hath made his fragrant nest, 
And throned me as a life-long guest. 

Near that chaste heart they seemed to me 
Types of far fairer flowers to be — 
The rosebuds of a human tree ! 

Buds that shall bloom beside my hearth, 
And there be held of richer worth 
Than all the kingliest gems of earth. 

Ah me ! the pathos of the thought ! 
I had not deemed she wanted aught ; 
Yet what a tenderer charm it wrought ! 

I know not if she marked the flame 
That lit my cheek, but not from shame. 
When one sweet image dimly came. 



62 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

There was a murmur soft and low j 
White folds of cambric, parted slow ; 
And little fingers played with snow ! 

How far my fancy dared to stray, 
A lover's reverence needs not say — 
Enough — the vision passed away ! 

Passed in a mist of happy tears. 
While something in my tranced ears 
Hummed like the future in a seer's ! 



A MOTHER'S WAIL 

My babe ! my tiny babe ! my only babe ! 
My single rose-bud in a crown of thorns ! 
My lamp that in that narrow hut of life, 
Whence I looked forth upon a night of storm ! 
Burned with the lustre of the moon and stars ! 

My babe ! my tiny babe ! my only babe ! 
Behold the bud is gone ! the thorns remain ! 
My lamp hath fallen from its niche — ah, me ! 
Earth drinks the fragrant flame, and I am left 
Forever and forever in the dark ! 

My babe ! my babe ! my own and only babe ! 
Where art thou now ? If somewhere in the sky 



A MOTHER'S WAIL 63 

An angel hold thee in his radiant arms, 
I challenge him to clasp thy tender form 
With half the fervor of a mother's love ! 



Forgive me, Lord ! forgive my reckless grief ! 
Forgive me that this rebel, selfish heart 
Would almost make me jealous for my child, 
Though thy own lap enthroned him. Lord, thou 

hast 
So many such ! I have — ah ! had but one ! 

O yet once more, my babe, to hear thy cry ! 

O yet once more, my babe, to see thy smile ! 

O yet once more to feel against my breast 

Those cool, soft hands, that warm, wet, eager 

mouth, 
With the sweet sharpness of its budding pearls ! 

But it must never, never more be mine 
To mark the growing meaning in thine eyes, 
To watch thy soul unfolding leaf by leaf, 
Or catch, with ever fresh surprise and joy, 
Thy dawning recognitions of the world. 

Three different shadows of thyself, my babe, - 
Change with each other while I weep. The first, 
The sweetest, yet the not least fraught with pain, 
Clings like my living boy around my neck, 
Or purrs and murmurs softly at my feet ! 



64 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Another is a little mound of earth ; 

That comes the oftenest, darling ! In my dreams, 

I see it beaten by the midnight rain, 

Or chilled beneath the moon. Ah ! what a couch 

For that which I have shielded from a breath 

That would not stir the violets on thy grave ! 

The third, my precious babe ! the third, O Lord ! 
Is a fair cherub face beyond the stars, 
Wearing the roses of a mystic bliss, 
Yet sometimes not unsaddened by a glance 
Turned earthward on a mother in her woe ! 

This is the vision, Lord, that I would keep 
Before me always. But, alas ! as yet. 
It is the dimmest and the rarest, too ! 
O touch my sight, or break the cloudy bars 
That hide it, lest I madden where I kneel ! 



OUR WILLIE 

'T WAS merry Christmas when he came, 

Our little boy beneath the sod ; 

And brighter burned the Christmas flame, 

And merrier sped the Christmas game, 

Because within the house there lay 

A shape as tiny as a fay — 

The Christmas gift of God ! 



OUR WILLIE 65 

In wreaths and garlands on the walls 
The holly hung its ruby balls, 

The mistletoe its pearls ; 
And a Christmas tree's fantastic fruits 
Woke laughter like a choir of flutes 

From happy boys and girls. 
For the mirth, which else had swelled as shrill 
As a school let loose to its errant will, 

Was softened by the thought, 
That in a dim hushed room above 
A mother's pains in a mother's love 

Were only just forgot. 
The jest, the tale, the toast, the glee, 
All took a sober tone ; 
We spoke of the babe upstairs, as we 
Held festival for him alone. 
When the bells rang in the Christmas morn, 
It scarcely seemed a sin to say 
That they rang because that babe was born, 
Not less than for the sacred day. 
Ah ! Christ forgive us for the crime 
Which drowned the memories of the time 

In a merely mortal bliss ! 
We owned the error when the mirth 
Of another Christmas lit the hearth 

Of every home but this. 
When, in that lonely burial-ground, 
With every Christmas sight and sound 
Removed or shunned, we kept 



66 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

A mournful Christmas by the mound 
Where little Willie slept ! 

Ah, hapless mother ! darling wife ! 
I might say nothing more, 
And the dull cold world would hold 
The story of that precious life 

As amply told ! 
Shall we, shall you and I, before 
That world's unsympathetic eyes 
Lay other relics from our store 

Of tender memories ? 
What could it know of the joy and love 
That throbbed and smiled and wept above 

An unresponsive thing? 
And who could share the ecstatic thrill 
With which we watched the upturned bill 
Of our bird at its living spring ? 
Shall we tell how in the time gone by, 
Beneath all changes of the sky, 
And in an ordinary home 

Amid the city's din, 
Life was to us a crystal dome, 

Our babe the flame therein ? 
Ah ! this were jargon on the mart; 
And though some gentle friend. 
And many and many a suffering heart, 
Would weep and comprehend, 
Yet even these might fail to see 



OUR WILLIE (i^ 

What we saw daily in the child — 

Not the mere creature undefiled, 

But the winged cherub soon to be. 

That wandering hand which seemed to reach 

At angel finger-tips, 
And that murmur like a mystic speech 

Upon the rosy lips, 
That something in the serious face 
Holier than even its infant grace, 
And that rapt gaze on empty space, 
Which made us, half believing, say, 
" Ah, little wide-eyed seer ! who knows 
But that for you this chamber glows 
With stately shapes and solemn shows ? " 
Which touched us, too, with vague alarms, 
Lest in the circle of our arms 
We held a being less akin 
To his parents in a world of sin 
Than to beings not of clay : 
How could we speak in human phrase, 
Of such scarce earthly traits and ways, 

What would not seem 

A doting dream, 
In the creed of these sordid days ? 

No ! let us keep 

Deep, deep, 
In sorrowing heart and aching brain. 
This story hidden with the pain. 
Which since that blue October night 



68 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

When Willie vanished from our sight, 

Must haunt us even in our sleep. 

In the gloom of the chamber where he died, 

And by that grave which, through our care, 

From Yule to Yule of every year. 

Is made like Spring to bloom ; 

And where, at times, we catch the sigh 

As of an angel floating nigh. 

Who longs but has not power to tell 

That in that violet-shrouded cell 

Lies nothing better than the shell 

Which he had cast aside — 

By that sweet grave, in that dark room. 

We may weave at will for each other's ear, 

Of that life, and that love, and that early doom, 

The tale which is shadowed here.: 

To us alone it will always be 

As fresh as our own misery ; 

But enough, alas ! for the world is said. 

In the brief " JHere lieth " of the dead ! 



ADDRESS 69 

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING 
OF THE NEW THEATRE AT RICHMOND 

A PRIZE POEM 

A FAIRY ring 
Drawn in the crimson of a battle-plain — 
From whose weird circle every loathsome thing 

And sight and sound of pain 
Are banished, while about it in the air, 
And from the ground, and from the low-hung skies, 

Throng, in a vision fair 
As ever lit a prophet's dying eyes, 

Gleams of that unseen world 
That lies about us, rainbow-tinted shapes 

With starry wings unfurled. 
Poised for a moment on such airy capes 

As pierce the golden foam 

Of sunset's silent main — 
Would image what in this enchanted dome, 

Amid the night of war and death 
In which the armed city draws its breath. 

We have built up ! 
For though no wizard wand or magic cup 

The spell hath wrought, 
Within this charmed fane, we ope the gates 

Of that divinest Fairy-land, 

Where under loftier fates 
Than rule the vulgar earth on which we stand. 



70 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Move the bright creatures of the realm of thought. 
Shut for one happy evening from the flood 
That roars around us, here you may behold — 

As if a desert way 

Could blossom and unfold 

A garden fresh with May — 
Substantialized in breathing flesh and blood, 

Souls that upon the poet's page 

Have lived from age to age, 
And yet have never donned this mortal clay. 

A golden strand 
Shall sometimes spread before you like the isle 

Where fair Miranda's smile 
Met the sweet stranger whom the father's art 

Had led unto her heart, 
Which, like a bud that waited for the light, 

Burst into bloom at sight ! 
Love shall grow softer in each maiden's eyes 
As Juliet leans her cheek upon her hand, 

And prattles to the night. 

Anon, a reverend form, 

With tattered robe and forehead bare, 
That challenge all the torments of the air, 

Goes by ! 
And the pent feelings choke in one long sigh, 
While, as the mimic thunder rolls, you hear 

The noble wreck of Lear 
Reproach like things of life the ancient skies. 

And commune with the storm ! 



ADDRESS 71 

Lo ! next a dim and silent chamber where, 
Wrapt in glad dreams in which, perchance, the 
Moor 

Tells his strange story o'er, 
The gentle Desdemona chastely lies. 
Unconscious of the loving murderer nigh. 

Then through a hush like death 

Stalks Denmark's mailed ghost ! 
And Hamlet enters with that thoughtful breath 
Which is the trumpet to a countless host 
Of reasons, but which wakes no deed from sleep ; 

For while it calls to strife. 
He pauses on the very brink of fact 
To toy as with the shadow of an act, 
And utter those wise saws that cut so deep 

Into the core of life ! 

Nor shall be wanting many a scene 

Where forms of more familiar mien. 
Moving through lowlier pathways, shall present 

The world of every day. 
Such as it whirls along the busy quay, 
Or sits beneath a rustic orchard wall, 
Or floats about a fashion-freighted hall, 
Or toils in attics dark the night away. 
Love, hate, grief, joy, gain, glory, shame, shall 

meet. 
As in the round wherein our lives are pent ; 

Chance for a while shall seem to reign, 



72 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

While Goodness roves like Guilt about the street, 

And Guilt looks innocent. 
But all at last shall vindicate the right, 
Crime shall be meted with its proper pain. 
Motes shall be taken from the doubter's sight, 
And Fortune's general justice rendered plain. 
Of honest laughter there shall be no dearth. 
Wit shall shake hands with humor grave and sweet. 
Our wisdom shall not be too wise for mirth, 
Nor kindred follies want a fool to greet. 
As sometimes from the meanest spot of earth 
A sudden beauty unexpected starts, 
So you shall find some germs of hidden worth 

Within the vilest hearts ; 
And now and then, when in those moods that turn 
To the cold Muse that whips a fault with sneers. 
You shall, perchance, be strangely touched to learn 

You 've struck a spring of tears ! 

But while we lead you thus from change to change, 
Shall we not find within our ample range 
Some type to elevate a people's heart — 
Some hero who shall teach a hero's part 

In this distracted time ? 
Rise from thy sleep of ages, noble Tell ! 
And, with the Alpine thunders of thy voice, 
As if across the billows unenthralled 
Thy Alps unto the Alleghanies called. 

Bid Liberty rejoice ! 



ADDRESS 73 

Proclaim upon this trans-Atlantic strand 

The deeds which, more than their own awful mien, 

Make every crag of Switzerland sublime ! 

And say to those whose feeble souls would lean, 

Not on themselves, but on some outstretched hand, 

That once a single mind sufficed to quell 

The malice of a tyrant ; let them know 

That each may crowd in every well- aimed blow, 

Not the poor strength alone of arm and brand, 

But the whole spirit of a mighty land ! 

Bid Liberty rejoice ! Aye, though its day 
Be far or near, these clouds shall yet be red 
With the large promise of the coming ray. 
Meanwhile, with that calm courage which can smile 
Amid the terrors of the wildest fray, 
Let us among the charms of Art awhile 

Fleet the deep gloom away ; 
Nor yet forget that on each hand and head 
Rest the dear rights for which we fight and pray. 



74 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

A VISION OF POESY 
Part I 



In a far country, and a distant age, 

Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, 
A boy was born of humble parentage ; 

The stars that shone upon his lonely birth 
Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame — 
Yet no tradition hath preserved his name. 

II 

'T is said that on the night when he was born, 
A beauteous shape swept slowly through the 
room; 

Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn. 

And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom ; 

But as it passed away there followed after 

A sigh of pain, and sounds of elvish laughter. 

Ill 

And so his parents deemed him to be blest 
Beyond the lot of mortals ; they were poor 

As the most timid bird that stored its nest 

With the stray gleanings at their cottage-door : 

Yet they contrived to rear their little dove, 

And he repaid them with the tenderest love. 



A VISION OF POESY 75 

IV 

The child was very beautiful in sooth, 

And as he waxed in years grew lovelier still ; 

On his fair brow the aureole of truth 

Beamed, and the purest maidens, with a thrill, 

Looked in his eyes, and from their heaven of blue 

Saw thoughts like sinless Angels peering through. 



Need there was none of censure or of praise 
To mould him to the kind parental hand ; 

Yet there was ever something in his ways, 
Which those about him could not understand ; 

A self-withdrawn and independent bliss, 

Beside the father's love, the mother's kiss. 

VI 

For oft, when he believed himself alone, 
They caught brief snatches of mysterious rhymes, 

Which he would murmur in an undertone. 

Like a pleased bee's in summer ; and at times 

A strange far look would come into his eyes, 

As if he saw a vision in the skies. 

VII 

And he upon a simple leaf would pore 

As if its very texture unto him 
Had some deep meaning ; sometimes by the door. 

From noon until a summer-day grew dim, 



76 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

He lay and watched the clouds ; and to his thought 
Night with her stars but fitful slumbers brought. 

VIII 

In the long hours of twilight, when the breeze 
Talked in low tones along the woodland rills, 

Or the loud North its stormy minstrelsies 
Blent with wild noises from the distant hills, 

The boy — his rosy hand against his ear 

Curved like a sea-shell — hushed as some rapt 
seer, 

IX 

Followed the sounds, and ever and again, 

As the wind came and went, in storm or play, 

He seemed to hearken as to some far strain 
Of mingled voices calling him away ; 

And they who watched him held their breath to 
trace 

The still and fixed attention in his face. 

X 

Once, on a cold and loud-voiced winter night, 
The three were seated by their cottage-fire — 

The mother watching by its flickering light 
The wakeful urchin, and the dozing sire ; 

There was a brief, quick motion like a bird's. 

And the boy's thought thus rippled into words : 



A VISION OF POESY 77 

XI 

" O mother ! thou hast taught me many things, 
But none I think more beautiful than speech — 

A nobler power than even those broad wings 
I used to pray for, when I longed to reach 

That distant peak which on our vale looks down, 

And wears the star of evening for a crown. 

XII 

" But, mother, while our human words are rife 
To us with meaning, other sounds there be 

Which seem, and are, the language of a life 
Around, yet unlike ours : winds talk ; the sea 

Murmurs articulately, and the sky 

Listens, and answers, though inaudibly. 

XIII 

" By stream and spring, in glades and woodlands 
lone, 

Beside our very cot I 've gathered flowers 
Inscribed with signs and characters unknown ; 

But the frail scrolls still baffle all my powers : 
What is this language and where is the key 
That opes its weird and wondrous mystery ? 

XIV 

*' The forests know it, and the mountains know, 
And it is written in the sunset's dyes ; 



78 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

A revelation to the world below 

Is daily going on before our eyes ; 
And, but for sinful thoughts, I do not doubt 
That we could spell the thrilling secret out. 

XV 

" O mother ! somewhere on this lovely earth 
I lived, and understood that mystic tongue, 

But, for some reason, to my second birth 
Only the dullest memories have clung, 

Like that fair tree that even while blossoming 

Keeps the dead berries of a former spring. 

XVI 

" Who shall put life in these ? ■ — my nightly dreams 
Some teacher of supernal powers foretell ; 

A fair and stately shape appears, which seems 
Bright with all truth ; and once, in a dark dell 

Within the forest, unto me there came 

A voice that must be hers, which called my name." 

XVII 

Puzzled and frightened, wondering more and more, 
The mother heard, but did not comprehend ; 

" So early dallying with forbidden lore ! 

Oh, what will chance, and wherein will it end ? 

My child ! my child ! " she caught him to her 
breast, 

" Oh, let me kiss these wildering thoughts to rest ! 



A VISION OF POESY 79 

XVIII 

" They cannot come from God, who freely gives 
All that we need to have, or ought to know; 

Beware, my son ! some evil influence strives 
To grieve thy parents, and to work thee woe ; 

Alas ! the vision I misunderstood ! 

It could not be an angel fair and good." 

XIX 

And then, in low and tremulous tones, she told 
The story of his birth-night ; the boy's eyes, 

As the wild tale went on, were bright and bold, 
With a weird look that did not seem surprise : 

" Perhaps," he said, " this lady and her elves 

Will one day come, and take me to themselves." 

XX 

" And wouldst thou leave us ? " " Dearest mother, 
no ! 
Hush ! I will check these thoughts that give thee 
pain ; 
Or, if they flow, as they perchance must flow, 

At least I will not utter them again ; 
Hark ! didst thou hear a voice like many streams ? 
Mother ! it is the spirit of my dreams ! " 

XXI 

Thenceforth, whatever impulse stirred below, 
In the deep heart beneath that childish breast, 



8o POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Those lips were sealed, and though the eye would 
glow, 
Yet the brow wore an air of perfect rest ; 
Cheerful, content, with calm though strong control 
He shut the temple-portals of his soul. 

XXII 

And when too restlessly the mighty throng 
Of fancies woke within his teeming mind, 

All silently they formed in glorious song, 
And floated off unheard, and undivined. 

Perchance not lost — with many a voiceless prayer 

They reached the sky, and found some record there. 

XXIII 

Softly and swiftly sped the quiet days ; 

The thoughtful boy has blossomed into youth, 
And still no maiden would have feared his gaze. 

And still his brow was noble with the truth : 
Yet, though he masks the pain with pious art, 
There burns a restless fever in his heart. 

XXIV 

A childish dream is now a deathless need 

Which drives him to far hills and distant wilds ; 

The solemn faith and fervor of his creed 
Bold as a martyr's, simple as a child's ; 

The eagle knew him as she knew the blast, 

And the deer did not flee him as he passed. 



A VISION OF POESY 8i 

XXV 

But gentle even in his wildest mood, 

Always, and most, he loved the bluest weather, 
And in some soft and sunny solitude 

Couched like a milder sunshine on the heather, 
He communed with the winds, and with the birds, 
As if they might have answered him in words. 

XXVI 

Deep buried in the forest was a nook 
Remote and quiet as its quiet skies ; 

He knew it, sought it, loved it as a book 

Full of his own sweet thoughts and memories ; 

Dark oaks and fluted chestnuts gathering round, 

Pillared and greenly domed a sloping mound. 

XXVII 

Whereof — white, purple, azure, golden, red. 
Confused like hues of sunset — the wild flowers 

Wove a rich dais ; through crosslights overhead 
Glanced the clear sunshine, fell the fruitful 
showers. 

And here the shyest bird would fold her wings ; 

Here fled the fairest and the gentlest things. 

XXVIII 

Thither, one night of mist and moonlight, came 
The youth, with nothing deeper in his thoughts 



82 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Than to behold beneath the silver flame 

New aspects of his fair and favorite spot ; 
A single ray attained the ground, and shed 
Just light enough to guide the wanderer's tread. 

XXIX 

And high and hushed arose the stately trees, 
Yet shut within themselves, like dungeons, where 

Lay fettered all the secrets of the breeze ; 
Silent, but not as slumbering, all things there 

Wore to the youth's aroused imagination 

An air of deep and solemn expectation. 

XXX 

" Hath Heaven," the youth exclaimed, " a sweeter 
spot, 

Or Earth another like it ? — yet even here 
The old mystery dwells ! and though I read it not, 

Here most I hope — it is, or seems so near ; 
So many hints come to me, but, alas ! 
I cannot grasp the shadows as they pass. 

XXXI 

" Here, from the very turf beneath me, I 

Catch, but just catch, I know not what faint 
sound. 

And darkly guess that from yon silent sky 
Float starry emanations to the ground ; 

These ears are deaf, these human eyes are blind, 

I want a purer heart, a subtler mind. 



A VISION OF POESY 83 

XXXII 

" Sometimes — could it be fancy ? — I have felt 
The presence of a spirit who might speak ; 

As down in lowly reverence I knelt, 

Its very breath hath kissed my burning cheek ; 

But I in vain have hushed my own to hear 

A wing or whisper stir the silent air ! " 

XXXIII 

Is not the breeze articulate ? Hark ! Oh, hark ! 

A distant murmur, like a voice of floods ; 
And onward sweeping slowly through the dark, 

Bursts like a call the night-wind from the woods ! 
Low bow the flowers, the trees fling loose their 

dreams, 
And through the waving roof a fresher moonlight 
streams. 

XXXIV 

" Mortal ! " — the word crept slowly round the 
place 
As if that wind had breathed it ! From no star 
Streams that soft lustre on the dreamer's face. 

Again a hushing calm ! while faint and far 
The breeze goes calling onward through the 

night. 
Dear God ! what vision chains that wide-strained 
sight ? 



84 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

XXXV 

Over the grass and flowers, and up the slope 

Glides a white cloud of mist, self-moved and 
slow, 

That, pausing at the hillock's moonlit cope, 
Swayed like a flame of silver ; from below 

The breathless youth with beating heart beholds 

A mystic motion in its argent folds. 

XXXVI 

Yet his young soul is bold, and hope grows warm, 
As flashing through that cloud of shadowy 
crape. 

With sweep of robes, and then a gleaming arm, 
Slowly developing, at last took shape 

A face and form unutterably bright. 

That cast a golden glamour on the night. 

XXXVII 

But for the glory round it it would seem 

Almost a mortal maiden ; and the boy, 
Unto whom love was yet an innocent dream, 

Shivered and crimsoned with an unknown joy ; 
As to the young Spring bounds the passionate 

South, 
He could have clasped and kissed her mouth to 
mouth. 



A VISION OF POESY 85 

XXXVIII 

Yet something checked, that was and was not 
dread, 

Till in a low sweet voice the maiden spake ; 
She was the Fairy of his dreams, she said, 

And loved him simply for his human sake ; 
And that in heaven, wherefrom she took her birth, 
They called her Poesy, the angel of the earth. 

XXXIX 

" And ever since that immemorial hour, 
When the glad morning-stars together sung. 

My task hath been, beneath a mightier Power, 
To keep the world forever fresh and young ; 

I give it not its fruitage and its green, 

But clothe it with a glory all unseen. 

XL 

" I sow the germ which buds in human art, 
And, with my sister, Science, I explore 

With light the dark recesses of the heart. 

And nerve the will, and teach the wish to soar j 

I touch with grace the body's meanest clay, 

While noble souls are nobler for my sway. 

XLI 

" Before my power the kings of earth have bowed ; 
I am the voice of Freedom, and the sword 



86 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Leaps from its scabbard when I call aloud ; 

Wherever life in sacrifice is poured, 
Wherever martyrs die or patriots bleed, 
I weave the chaplet and award the meed. 

XLII 

" Where Passion stoops, or strays, is cold, or dead, 

I lift from error, or to action thrill ! 
Or if it rage too madly in its bed. 

The tempest hushes at my * Peace ! be still ! * 
I know how far its tides should sink or swell, 
And they obey my sceptre and my spell. 

XLIII 

" All lovely things, and gentle — the sweet laugh 
Of children. Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's 
clasp. 

The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff. 
The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp — 

All that exalts the grounds of happiness. 

All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, 

XLIV 

" To me are sacred ; at my holy shrine 

Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints ; 

I turn life's tasteless waters into wine, 

And flush them through and through with purple 
tints. 

Wherever Earth is fair, and Heaven looks down, 

I rear my altars, and I wear my crown. 



A VISION OF POESY ?>7 

XLV 

" I am the unseen spirit thou hast sought, 
I woke those shadowy questionings that vex 

Thy young mind, lost in its own cloud of thought, 
And rouse the soul they trouble and perplex ; 

I filled thy days with visions, and thy nights 

Blessed with all sweetest sounds and fairy sights. 

XLVI 

" Not here, not in this world, may I disclose 
The mysteries in which this life is hearsed ; 

Some doubts there be that, with some earthly woes, 
By Death alone shall wholly be dispersed ; 

Yet on those very doubts from this low sod 

Thy soul shall pass beyond the stars to God. 

XLVII 

" And so to knowledge, climbing grade by grade. 
Thou shalt attain whatever mortals can. 

And what thou mayst discover by my aid 
Thou shalt translate unto thy brother man j 

And men shall bless the power that flings a ray 

Into their night from thy diviner day. 

XLVIII 

" For, from thy lofty height, thy words shall fall 
Upon their spirits like bright cataracts 

That front a sunrise ; thou shalt hear them call 
Amid their endless waste of arid facts, 



88 . POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

As wearily they plod their way along, 
Upon the rhythmic zephyrs of thy song. 

XLIX 

" All this is in thy reach, but much depends 
Upon thyself — thy future I await ; 

I give the genius, point the proper ends, 
But the true bard is his own only Fate ; ; 

Into thy soul my soul have I infused ; 

Take care thy lofty powers be wisely used. 



" The Poet owes a high and holy debt, 
Which, if he feel, he craves not to be heard 

For the poor boon of praise, or place, nor yet 
Does the mere joy of song, as with the bird 

Of many voices, prompt the choral lay 

That cheers that gentle pilgrim on his way. 

LI 

" Nor may he always sweep the passionate lyre, 
Which is his heart, only for such relief 

As an impatient spirit may desire, 

Lest, from the grave which hides a private grief, 

The spells of song call up some pallid wraith 

To blast or ban a mortal hope or faith. 

LII 

" Yet over his deep soul, with all its crowd 

Of varying hopes and fears, he still must brood ; 



A VISION OF POESY 89 

As from its azure height a tranquil cloud 

Watches its own bright changes in the flood ; 
Self -reading, not self-loving — they are twain — 
And sounding, while he mourns, the depths of pain. 

LIII 

" Thus shall his songs attain the common breast, 
Dyed in his own life's blood, the sign and seal, 

Even as the thorns which are the martyr's crest, 
That do attest his office, and appeal 

Unto the universal human heart 

In sanction of his mission and his art. 

LIV 

" Much yet remains unsaid — pure must he be ; 

Oh, blessed are the pure ! for they shall hear 
Where others hear not, see where others see 

With a dazed vision : who have drawn most 
near 
My shrine, have ever brought a spirit cased 
And mailed in a body clean and chaste. 

LV 

" The Poet to the whole wide world belongs, 
Even as the teacher is the child's — I said 

No selfish aim should ever mar his songs, 
But self wears many guises ; men may wed 

Self in another, and the soul may be 

Self to its centre, all unconsciously. 



90 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

LVI 

" And therefore must the Poet watch, lest he, 
In the dark struggle of this life, should take 

Stains which he might not notice ; he must flee 
Falsehood, however winsome, and forsake 

All for the Truth, assured that Truth alone 

Is Beauty, and can make him all my own. 

LVII 

" And he must be as armed warrior strong, 
And he must be as gentle as a girl, 

And he must front, and sometimes suffer wrong, 
With brow unbent, and lip untaught to curl ; 

For wrath, and scorn, and pride, however just, 

Fill the clear spirit's eyes with earthly dust." 



The story came to me — it recks not whence — 
In fragments. Oh ! if I could tell it all. 
If human speech indeed could tell it all, 
'T were not a whit less wondrous, than if I 
Should find, untouched in leaf and stem, and bright. 
As when it bloomed three thousand years ago, 
On some Idalian slope, a perfect rose. 
Alas ! a leaf or two, and they perchance 
Scarce worth the hiving, one or two dead leaves 
Are the sole harvest of a summer's toil. 
There was a moment, ne'er to be recalled. 
When to the Poet's hope within my heart. 



A VISION OF POESY 91 

They wore a tint like life's, but in my hand, 
I know not why, they withered. I have heard 
Somewhere, of some dead monarch, from the tomb, 
Where he had slept a century and more, 
Brought forth, that when the coffin was laid bare, 
Albeit the body in its mouldering robes 
Was fleshless, yet one feature still remained 
Perfect, or perfect seemed at least j the eyes 
Gleamed for a second on the startled crowd, 
And then went out in ashes. Even thus 
The story, when I drew it from the grave 
Where it had lain so long, did seem, I thought, 
Not wholly lifeless ; but even while I gazed 
To fix its features on my heart, and called 
The world to wonder with me, lo ! it proved 
I looked upon a corpse ! 

What further fell 
In that lone forest nook, how much was taught. 
How much was only hinted, what the youth 
Promised, if promise were required, to do 
Or strive for, what the gifts he bore away — 
Or added powers or blessings — how at last, 
The vision ended and he sought his home, 
How lived there, and how long, and when he 

passed 
Into the busy world to seek his fate, 
I know not, and if any ever knew, 
The tale hath perished from the earth ; for here 
The slender thread on which my song is strung 



92 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Breaks off, and many after years of life 

Are lost to sight, the life to reappear 

Only towards its close — as of a dream 

We catch the end and opening, but forget 

That which had joined them in the dreaming brain ; 

Or as a mountain with a belt of mist 

That shows his base, and far above, a peak 

With a blue plume of pines. 

But turn the page 
And read the only hints that yet remain. 



Part II 

I 

It is not winter yet, but that sweet time 

In autumn when the first cool days are past ; 

A week ago, the leaves were hoar with rime. 

And some have dropped before the North wind's 
blast ; 

But the mild hours are back, and at mid-noon, 

The day hath all the genial warmth of June. 



What slender form lies stretched along the mound ? 

Can it be his, the Wanderer's, with that brow 
Gray in its prime, those eyes that wander round 

Listlessly, with a jaded glance that now 
Seems to see nothing where it rests, and then 
Pores on each trivial object in its ken ? 



• A VISION OF POESY 93 

III 

See how a gentle maid's wan fingers clasp 
The last fond love-notes of some faithless hand ; 

Thus, with a transient interest, his weak grasp 
Holds a few leaves as when of old he scanned 

The meaning in their gold and crimson streaks; 

But the sweet dream has vanished ! hush ! he 
speaks ! 

IV 

" Once more, once more, after long pain and toil, 
And yet not long, if I should count by years, 

I breathe my native air, and tread the soil 
I trod in childhood ; if I shed no tears, 

No happy tears, 't is that their fount is dry. 

And joy that cannot weep must sigh, must sigh. 



" These leaves, my boyish books in days of yore, 
When, as the weeks sped by, I seemed to stand 

Ever upon the brink of some wild lore — 

These leaves shall make my bed, and — for the 
hand 

Of God is on me, chilling brain and breath — 

I shall not ask a softer couch in death. 

VI 

*' Here was it that I saw, or dreamed I saw, 
I know not which, that shape of love and light. 



94 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Spirit of Song ! have I not owned thy law ? 

Have I not taught, or striven to teach the right, 
And kept my heart as clean, my life as sweet, 
As mortals may, when mortals mortals meet ? 

VII 

"Thou know'st how I went forth, my youthful 
breast 

On fire with thee, amid the paths of men ; 
Once in my wanderings, my lone footsteps pressed 

A mountain forest ; in a sombre glen, 
Down which its thundrous boom a cataract flung, 
A little bird, unheeded, built and sung. 

VIII 

" So fell my voice amid the whirl and rush 

Of human passions ; if unto my art 
Sorrow hath sometimes owed a gentler gush, 

I know it not ; if any Poet-heart 
Hath kindled at my songs its light divine, 
I know it not ; no ray came back to mine. 

IX 

" Alone in crowds, once more I sought to make 
Of senseless things my friends j the clouds that 
burn 

Above the sunset, and the flowers that shake 
Their odors in the wind — these would not turn 

Their faces from me ; far from cities, I 

Forgot the scornful world that passed me by. 



A VISION OF POESY 95 

X 

"Yet even the world's cold slights I might have 
borne, 
Nor fled, though sorrowing ; but I shrank at last 
When one sweet face, too sweet, I thought, for 
scorn. 
Looked scornfully upon me ; then I passed 
From all that youth had dreamed or manhood 

planned, 
Into the self that none would understand. 

XI 

" She was — I never wronged her womanhood 
By crowning it with praises not her own — 

She was all earth's, and earth's, too, in that mood 
When she brings forth her fairest j I atone 

Now, in this fading brow and failing frame. 

That such a soul such soul as mine could tame. 

XII 

" Clay to its kindred clay ! I loved, in sooth, 
Too deeply and too purely to be blest ; 

With something more of lust and less of truth 
She would have sunk all blushes on my breast ) 

And — but I must not blame her — in my ear 

Death whispers ! and the end, thank God ! draws 
near ! " 



96 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

XIII 

Hist ! on the perfect silence of the place 
Comes and dies oif a sound like far-off rain 

With voices mingled ; on the Poet's face 

A shadow, where no shadow should have lain, 

Falls the next moment : nothing meets his sight, 

Yet something moves betwixt him and the light. 

XIV 

And a voice murmurs, " Wonder not, but hear ! 

Me to behold again thou need'st not seek ; 
Yet by the dim-felt influence on the air. 

And by the mystic shadow on thy cheek. 
Know, though thou mayst not touch with fleshly 

hands, 
The genius of thy life beside thee stands ! 

XV 

" Unto no fault, O weary-hearted one ! 

Unto no fault of man's thou ow'st thy fate ; 
All human hearts that beat this earth upon. 

All human thoughts and human passions wait 
Upon the genuine bard, to him belong. 
And help in their own way the Poet's song. 

XVI 

" How blame the world ? for the world hast thou 
wrought ? 
Or wast thou but as one who aims to fling 



A VISION OF POESY 97 

The weight of some unutterable thought 

Down like a burden ? what from questioning 
Too subtly thy own spirit, and to speech 
But half subduing themes beyond the reach 

XVII 

" Of mortal reason ; what from living much 
In that dark world of shadows, where the soul 

Wanders bewildered, striving still to clutch 
Yet never clutching once, a shadowy goal, 

Which always flies, and while it flies seems near, 

Thy songs were riddles hard to mortal ear. 

XVIII 

" This was the hidden selfishness that marred 
Thy teachings ever ; this the false key-note 

That on such souls as might have loved thee jarred 
Like an unearthly language ; thou didst float 

On a strange water ; those who stood on land 

Gazed, but they could not leave their beaten strand. 

XIX 

" Your elements were different, and apart — 

The world's and thine — and even in those in- 
tense 

And watchful broodings o'er thy inmost heart, 
It was thy own peculiar difference 

That thou didst seek ; nor didst thou care to find 

Aught that would bring thee nearer to thy kind. 



98 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

XX 

" Not thus the Poet, who in blood and brain 
Would represent his race and speak for all, 

Weaves the bright woof of that impassioned strain 
Which drapes, as if for some high festival 

Of pure delights — whence few of human birth 

May rightly be shut out — the common earth. 

XXI 

" As the same law that moulds a planet, rounds 
A drop of dew, so the great Poet spheres 

Worlds in himself ; no selfish limit bounds 
A sympathy that folds all characters. 

All ranks, all passions, and all life almost 

In its wide circle. Like some noble host, 

XXII 

" He spreads the riches of his soul, and bids 
Partake who will. Age has its saws of truth, 

And love is for the maiden's drooping lids, 
And words of passion for the earnest youth; 

Wisdom for all j and when it seeks relief. 

Tears, and their solace for the heart of grief. 

XXIII 

" Nor less on him than thee the mysteries 
Within him and about him ever weigh ' — 

The meanings in the stars, and in the breeze. 
All the weird wonders of the common day, 



A VISION OF POESY 99 

Truths that the merest point removes from reach, 
And thoughts that pause upon the brink of speech ; 

XXIV 

" But on the surface of his song these lie 
As shadows, not as darkness ; and alway, 

Even though it breathe the secrets of the sky, 
There is a human purpose in the lay ; 

Thus some tall fir that whispers to the stars 

Shields at its base a cotter's lattice-bars. 

XXV 

" Even such my Poet ! for thou still art mine ! 

Thou mightst have been, and now have calmly 
died, 
A priest, and not a victim at the shrine ; 

Alas ! yet was it all thy fault ? I chide. 
Perchance, myself within thee, and the fate 
To which thy power was solely consecrate. 

XXVI 

" Thy life hath not been wholly without use. 
Albeit that use is partly hidden now j 

In thy unmingled scorn of any truce 
With this world's specious falsehoods, often thou 

Hast uttered, through some all unworldly song, 

Truths that for man might else have slumbered 
long. 



loo POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

XXVII 

" And these not always vainly on the crowd 

Have fallen ; some are cherished now, and some, 

In mystic phrases wrapped as in a shroud, 
Wait the diviner, who as yet is dumb 

Upon the breast of God — the gate of birth 

Closed on a dreamless ignorance of earth. 

XXVIII 

" And therefore, though thy name shall pass away, 
Even as a cloud that hath wept all its showers. 

Yet as that cloud shall live again one day 
In the glad grass, and in the happy flowers. 

So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter 
rhymes, 

Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times." 



THE PAST 

To-day's most trivial act may hold the seed 
Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth ; 

Oh, cherish always every word and deed ! 
The simplest record of thyself hath worth. 

If thou hast ever slighted one old thought, 
Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at last ; 

The time must come wherein thou shalt be taught 
The value and the beauty of the Past. 



DREAMS loi 

Not merely as a warner and a guide, 

" A voice behind thee," sounding to the strife ; 
But something never to be put aside, 

A part and parcel of thy present life. 

Not as a distant and a darkened sky. 

Through which the stars peep, and the moon- 
beams glow ; 
But a surrounding atmosphere, whereby 

We live and breathe, sustained in pain and woe. 

A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, 
Each still to each corrective and relief. 

Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, 
And nothing wholly perishes but Grief. 

Ah, me ! — not dies — no more than spirit dies ; 

But in a change like death is clothed with wings ; 
A serious angel, with entrancM eyes. 

Looking to far-off and celestial things. 



DREAMS 

Who first said " false as dreams " ? Not one who 
saw 

Into the wild and wondrous world they sway ; 
No thinker who hath read their mystic law ; 

No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay. 



I02 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Else had he known that through the human breast 
Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams, 

That, passed unnoticed in the day's unrest, 

Come out at night, like stars, in shining dreams ; 

That minds too busy or too dull to mark 
The dim suggestion of the noisier hours, 

By dreams in the deep silence of the dark, 

Are roused at midnight with their folded powers. 

Like that old fount beneath Dodona's oaks, 
That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon, 

When the calm night arose with modest looks, 
Caught with full wave the sparkle of the moon. 

If, now and then, a ghastly shape glide in. 
And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee, 

It is the ghost of some forgotten sin 
We failed to exorcise on bended knee. 

And that sweet face which only yesternight 
Came to thy solace, dreamer (didst thou read 

The blessing in its eyes of tearful light ?), 
Was but the spirit of some gentle deed. 

Each has its lesson ; for our dreams in sooth, 
Come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves. 

Are allegories with deep hearts of truth 
That tell us solemn secrets of ourselves. 



THE ARCTIC VOYAGER 103 



THE ARCTIC VOYAGER 

Shall I desist, twice baffled ? Once by land, 
And once by sea, I fought and strove with storms, 
All shades of danger, tides, and weary calms ; 
Head-currents, cold and famine, savage beasts, 
And men more savage ; all the while my face 
Looked northward tow^ard the pole; if mortal 

strength 
Could have sustained me, I had never turned 
Till I had seen the star which never sets 
Freeze in the Arctic zenith. That I failed 
To solve the mysteries of the ice-bound world, 
Was not because I faltered in the quest. 
Witness those pathless forests which conceal 
The bones of perished comrades, that long march. 
Blood-tracked o'er flint and snow, and one dread 

night 
By Athabasca, when a cherished life 
Flowed to give life to others. This, and worse, 
I suffered — let it pass — it has not tamed 
My spirit nor the faith which was my strength. 
Despite of waning years, despite the world 
Which doubts, the few who dare, I purpose now — 
A purpose long and thoughtfully resolved. 
Through all its grounds of reasonable hope — 
To seek beyond the ice which guards the Pole, 
A sea of open water j for I hold, 



104 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Not without proofs, that such a sea exists, 

And may be reached, though since this earth was 

made 
No keel hath ploughed it, and to mortal ear 
No wind hath told its secrets .... With this 

tide 
I sail ; if all be well, this very moon 
Shall see my ship beyond the southern cape 
Of Greenland, and far up the bay through which, 
With diamond spire and gorgeous pinnacle, 
The fleets of winter pass to warmer seas. 
Whether, my hardy shipmates ! we shall reach 
Our bourne, and come with tales of wonder back, 
Or whether we shall lose the precious time. 
Locked in thick ice, or whether some strange fate 
Shall end us all, I know not ; but I know 
A lofty hope, if earnestly pursued. 
Is its own crown, and never in this life 
Is labor wholly fruitless. In this faith 
I shall not count the chances — sure that all 
A prudent foresight asks we shall not want, 
And all that bold and patient hearts can do 
Ye will not leave undone. The rest is God's ! 



DRAMATIC FRAGMENT 105 



DRAMATIC FRAGMENT 

Let the boy have his will ! I tell thee, brother, 
We treat these little ones too much like flowers, 
Training them, in blind selfishness, to deck 
Sticks of our poor setting, when they might. 
If left to clamber where themselves incline, 
Find nobler props to cling to, fitter place, 
And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong — 
Thou striv'st to sow with feelings all thine own. 
With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims, 
Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed 
Upon a certain round of circumstance, 
A soul as different and distinct from thine 
As love of goodness is from love of glory. 
Or noble poesy from noble prose. 
I could forgive thee, if thou wast of them 
Who do their fated parts in this world's business, 
Scarce knowing how or why — for common minds 
See not the difference 'twixt themselves and oth- 
ers — 
But thou, thou, with the visions which thy youth 

did cherish 
Substantialized upon thy regal brow, 
Shouldst boast a deeper insight. We are born. 
It is my faith, in miniature completeness. 
And like each other only in our weakness. 
Even with our mother's milk upon our lips, 



io6 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Our smiles have different meanings, and our hands 

Press with degrees of softness to her bosom. 

It is not change — whatever in the heart 

That wears its semblance, we, in looking back, 

With gratulation or regret^ perceive — 

It is not change we undergo, but only 

Growth or development. Yes ! what is childhood 

But after all a sort of golden daylight, 

A beautiful and blessed wealth of sunshine. 

Wherein the powers and passions of the soul 

Sleep starlike but existent, till the night 

Of gathering years shall call the slumbers forth, 

And they rise up in glory ? Early grief, 

A shadow like the darkness of eclipse, 

Hath sometimes waked them sooner. 



THE SUMMER BOWER 

It is a place whither I 've often gone 

For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool, 

A beautiful recess in neighboring woods. 

Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall, 

Arch it o'erhead and column it around, 

Framing a covert, natural and wild. 

Domelike and dim ; though nowhere so enclosed 

But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot 

Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here 

A transient and unfrequent visitor ; 



THE SUMMER BOWER 107 

Yet if the day be calm, not often then, 
Whilst the high pines in one another's arms 
Sleep, you may sometimes with unstartled ear 
Catch the far fall of voices, how remote 
You know not, and you do not care to know. 
The turf is soft and green, but not a flower 
Lights the recess, save one, star-shaped and 

bright — 
I do not know its name — which here and there 
Gleams like a sapphire set in emerald. 
A narrow opening in the branched roof, 
A single one, is large enough to show, 
With that half glimpse a dreamer loves so much. 
The blue air and the blessing of the sky. 
Thither I always bent my idle steps. 
When griefs depressed, or joys disturbed my heart, 
And found the calm I looked for, or returned 
Strong with the quiet rapture in my soul. 

But one day, 
One of those July days when winds have fled 
One knows not whither, I, most sick in mind 
With thoughts that shall be nameless, yet, no doubt, 
Wrong, or at least unhealthful, since though dark 
With gloom, and touched with discontent, they had 
No adequate excuse, nor cause, nor end, 
I, with these thoughts, and on this summer day, 
Entered the accustomed haunt, and found for once 
No medicinal virtue. 

Not a leaf 
Stirred with the whispering welcome which I sought. 



io8 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

But in a close and humid atmosphere, 

Every fair plant and implicated bough 

Hung lax and lifeless. Something in the place, 

Its utter stillness, the unusual heat. 

And some more secret influence, I thought, 

Weighed on the sense like sin. Above I saw. 

Though not a cloud was visible in heaven. 

The pallid sky look through a glazed mist 

Like a blue eye in death. 

The change, perhaps, 
Was natural enough ; my jaundiced sight. 
The weather, and the time explain it all : 
Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot, 
And shrined it in these verses for my heart. 
Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought 
Not less, and in all shades of various moods ; 
But always shun to desecrate the spot 
By vain repinings, sickly sentiments, 
Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though 
Pure as she was in Eden when her breath 
Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse, 
In her own way and with a just reserve, 
To sympathize with human suffering ; 
But for the pains, the fever, and the fret 
Engendered of a weak, unquiet heart. 
She hath no solace ; and who seeks her when 
These be the troubles over which he moans. 
Reads in her unreplying lineaments 
Rebukes, that, to the guilty consciousness. 
Strike like contempt. 



A SOUTHERN WINTER NIGHT 109 



A RHAPSODY OF A SOUTHERN WINTER 
NIGHT 

Oh ! dost thou flatter falsely, Hope ? 
The day hath scarcely passed that saw thy birth, 
Yet thy white wings are plumed to all their scope. 
And hour by hour thine eyes have gathered light, 

And grown so large and bright, 
That my whole future life unfolds what seems, 

Beneath their gentle beams, 
A path that leads athwart some guiltless earth, 
To which a star is dropping from the night ! 

Not many moons ago. 
But when these leafless beds were all aglow 
With summer's dearest treasures, I 
Was reading in this lonely garden-nook ; 
A July noon was cloudless in the sky. 
And soon I put my shallow studies by; 
Then, sick at heart, and angered by the book, 
Which, in good sooth, was but the long-drawn sigh 
Of some one who had quarreled with his kind, 
Vexed at the very proofs which I had sought, 
And all annoyed while all alert to find 
A plausible likeness of my own dark thought, 
I cast me down beneath yon oak's wide boughs. 
And, shielding with both hands my throbbing 
brows. 



no POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Watched lazily the shadows of my brain. 

The feeble tide of peevishness went down, 

And left a flat dull waste of dreary pain, 

Which seemed to clog the blood in every vein ; 

The world, of course, put on its darkest frown — 

In all its realms I saw no mortal crown 

Which did not wound or crush some restless 

head; 
And hope, and will, and motive, all were dead. 
So, passive as a stone, I felt too low 
To claim a kindred with the humblest flower ; 
Even that would bare its bosom to a shower. 
While I henceforth would take no pains to live, 
Nor place myself where I might feel or give 
A single impulse whence a wish could grow. 
There was a tulip scarce a gossamer's throw 
Beyond that platanus. A little child. 
Most dear to me, looked through the fence and 

smiled 
A hint that I should pluck it for her sake. 
Ah, me ! I trust I was not well awake — 

The voice was very sweet, 
Yet a faint languor kept me in my seat. 
I saw a pouted lip, a toss, and heard 
Some low expostulating tones, but stirred 
Not even a leaf's length, till the pretty fay, 
Wondering, and half abashed at the wild feat, 
Climbed the low pales, and laughed my gloom 

away. 



A SOUTHERN WINTER NIGHT in 

And here again, but led by other powers, 

A morning and a golden afternoon. 

These happy stars, and yonder setting moon, 

Have seen me speed, unreckoned and untasked, 

A round of precious hours. 
Oh ! here, where in that summer noon I basked, 
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers, 
To justify a life of sensuous rest, 
A question dear as home or heaven was asked, 
And without language answered. I was blest ! 
Blest with those nameless boons too sweet to trust 
Unto the telltale confidence of song. 
Love to his own glad self is sometimes coy. 
And even thus much doth seem to do him wrong ; 
While in the fears which chasten mortal joy, 
Is one that shuts the lips, lest speech too free, 
With the cold touch of hard reality. 
Should turn its priceless jewels into dust. 
Since that long kiss which closed the morning's 

talk, 
I have not strayed beyond this garden walk. 
As yet a vague delight is all I know, 
A sense of joy so wild 't is almost pain, 
And like a trouble drives me to and fro. 
And will not pause to count its own sweet gain. 
I am so happy ! that is all my thought. 
To-morrow I will turn it round and round. 
And seek to know its limits and its ground. 
To-morrow I will task my heart to learn 



112 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

The duties which shall spring from such a seed, 
And where it must be sown, and how be wrought. 
But oh ! this reckless bliss is bliss indeed ! 
And for one day I choose to seal the urn 
Wherein is shrined Love's missal and his creed. 
Meantime I give my fancy all it craves j 
Like him who found the West when first he caught 
The light that glittered from the world he sought, 
And furled his sails till Dawn should show the 

land; 
While in glad dreams he saw the ambient waves 
Go rippling brightly up a golden strand. 

Hath there not been a softer breath at play 
In the long woodland aisles than often sweeps 
At this rough season through their solemn deeps — 
A gentle Ariel sent by gentle May, 

Who knew it was the morn 
On which a hope was born, 
To greet the flower e'er it was fully blown, 
And nurse it as some lily of her own ? 
And wherefore, save to grace a happy day. 
Did the whole West at blushing sunset glow 
With clouds that, floating up in bridal snow. 
Passed with the festal eve, rose-crowned, away ? 
And now, if I may trust my straining sight. 
The heavens appear with added stars to-night. 
And deeper depths, and more celestial height. 
Than hath been reached except in dreams or death. 



FLOWER-LIFE 113 

Hush, sweetest South ! I love thy delicate breath ; 

But hush ! methought I felt an angel's kiss ! 

Oh ! all that lives is happy in my bliss. 

That lonely fir, which always seems 

As though it locked dark secrets in itself, 

Hideth a gentle elf, 
Whose wand shall send me soon a frolic troop 
Of rainbow visions, and of moonlit dreams. 
Can joy be weary, that my eyelids droop ? 
To-night I shall not seek my curtained nest, 

But even here find rest. 
Who whispered then? And what are they that 

peep 
Betwixt the foliage in the tree-top there ? 
Come, Fairy Shadows ! for the morn is near. 
When to your sombre pine ye all must creep ; 
Come, ye wild pilots of the darkness, ere 
My spirit sinks into the gulf of Sleep ; 
Even now it circles round and round the deep — 

Appear! Appear! 



FLOWER-LIFE 

I THINK that, next to your sweet eyes. 
And pleasant books, and starry skies, 

I love the world of flowers ; 
Less- for their beauty of a day, 
Than for the tender things they say, 



114 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And for a creed I 've held alway, 
That they are sentient powers. 

It may be matter for a smile — 
And I laugh secretly the while 

I speak the fancy out — 
But that they love, and that they woo, 
And that they often marry too, 
And do as noisier creatures do, 

I Ve not the faintest doubt. 

And so, I cannot deem it right 

To take them from the glad sunlight, 

As I have sometimes dared ; 
Though not without an anxious sigh 
Lest this should break some gentle tie, 
Some covenant of friendship, I 

Had better far have spared. 

And when, in wild or thoughtless hours. 
My hand hath crushed the tiniest flowers, 

I ne'er could shut from sight 
The corpses of the tender things. 
With other drear imaginings. 
And little angel-flowers with wings 

Would haunt me through the night. 

Oh ! say you, friend, the creed is fraught 
With sad, and even with painful thought, 
Nor could you bear to know 



A SUMMER SHOWER 115 

That such capacities belong 
To creatures helpless against wrong, 
At once too weak to fly the strong 
Or front the feeblest foe ? 

So be it always, then, with you ; 
So be it — whether false or true — 

I press my faith on none ; 
If other fancies please you more, 
The flowers shall blossom as before, 
Dear as the Sibyl-leaves of yore. 

But senseless, every one. 

Yet, though I give you no reply, 
It were not hard to justify 

My creed to partial ears ; 
But, conscious of the cruel part, 
My rhymes would flow with faltering art, 
I could not plead against your heart. 

Nor reason with your tears. 



A SUMMER SHOWER 

Welcome, raiii or tempest 

From yon airy powers. 
We have languished for them 
Many sultry hours, 
And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her 
flowers. 



Ii6 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

What have they been doing 

In the burning June ? 
Riding with the genii ? 
Visiting the moon ? 
Or sleeping on the ice amid an arctic noon ? 

Bring they with them jewels 

From the sunset lands ? 
What are these they scatter 

With such lavish hands ? 
There are no brighter gems in Raolconda's sands. 

Pattering on the gravel, 

Dropping from the eaves, 
Glancing in the grass, and 
Tinkling on the leaves, 
They flash the liquid pearls as flung from fairy 
sieves. 

Meanwhile, unreluctant, 

Earth like Danae lies; 
Listen ! is it fancy. 

That beneath us sighs. 
As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies ? 

Jove, it is, descendeth 

In those crystal rills ; 
And this world-wide trempr 

Is a pulse that thrills 
To a god's life infused through veins of velvet hills. 



BABY'S AGE 117 

Wait, thou jealous sunshine, 

Break not on their bliss ; 
Earth will blush in roses 
Many a day for this, 
And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss. 



BABY'S AGE 

She came with April blooms and showers ; 

We count her little life by flowers. 

As buds the rose upon her cheek, 

We choose a flower for every week. 

A week of hyacinths, we say, 

And one of heart's-ease, ushered May ; 

And then because two wishes met 

Upon the rose and violet — 

I liked the Beauty, Kate, the Nun — 

The violet and the rose count one. 

A week the apple marked with white ; 

A week the lily scored in light ; 

Red poppies closed May's happy moon, 

And tulips this blue week in June. 

Here end as yet the flowery links ; 

To-day begins the week of pinks ; 

But soon — so grave, and deep, and wise 

The meaning grows in Baby's eyes, 

So very deep for Baby's age — 

We think to date a week with sage ! 



ii8 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



THE MESSENGER ROSE 

If you have seen a richer glow, 

Pray, tell me where your roses blow ! 

Look ! coral-leaved ! and — mark these spots 

Red staining red in crimson clots, 

Like a sweet lip bitten through 

In a pique. There, where that hue 

Is spilt in drops, some fairy thing 

Hath gashed the azure of its wing. 

Or thence, perhaps, this very morn, 

Plucked the splinters of a thorn. 

Rose ! I make thy bliss my care ! 
In my lady's dusky hair 
Thou shalt-burn this coming night, 
With even a richer crimson light. 
To requite me thou shalt tell — 
What I might not say as well — 
How I love her ; how, in brief, 
On a certain crimson leaf 
In my bosom, is a debt 
Writ in deeper crimson yet. 
If she wonder what it be — 
But she '11 guess it, I foresee — 
Tell her that I date it, pray. 
From the first sweet night in May. 



ON PRESSING SOME FLOWERS 119 



ON PRESSING SOME FLOWERS 

So, they are dead ! Love ! when they passed 
From thee to me, our fingers met ; 

withered darlings of the May ! 
I feel those fairy fingers yet. 

And for the bliss ye brought me then. 
Your faded forms are precious things ; 

No flowers so fair, no buds so sweet 

Shall bloom through all my future springs. 

And so, pale ones ! with hands as soft 
As if I closed a baby's eyes, 

1 '11 lay you in some favorite book 

Made sacred by a poet's sighs. 

Your lips shall press the sweetest song, 
The sweetest, saddest song I know. 

As ye had perished, in your pride. 
Of some lone bard's melodious woe. 

Oh, Love ! hath love no holier shrine ! 

Oh, heart ! could love but lend the power, 
I 'd lay thy crimson pages bare. 

And every leaf should fold its flower. 



126 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

1866 

ADDRESSED TO THE OLD YEAR 

Art thou not glad to close 

Thy wearied eyes, O saddest child of Time, 
Eyes which have looked on every mortal crime. 

And swept the piteous round of mortal woes ? 

In dark Plutonian caves, 

Beneath the lowest deep, go, hide thy head ; 

Or earth thee where the blood that thou hast 
shed 
May trickle on thee from thy countless graves ! 

Take with thee all thy gloom 

And guilt, and all our griefs, save what the breast. 
Without a wrong to some dear shadowy guest. 

May not surrender even to the tomb. 

No tear shall weep thy fall. 

When, as the midnight bell doth toll thy fate. 
Another lifts the sceptre of thy state. 

And sits a monarch in thine ancient hall. 

Him all the hours attend. 

With a new hope like morning in their eyes ; 



i866 — ADDRESSED TO THE OLD YEAR 121 

Him the fair earth and him these radiant skies 
Hail as their sovereign, welcome as their friend. 

Him, too, the nations wait ; 

" O lead us from the shadow of the Past," 
In a long wail like this December blast, 

They cry, and, crying, grow less desolate. 

How he will shape his sway 

They ask not — for old doubts and fears will 
cling — 

And yet they trust that, somehow, he will bring 
A sweeter sunshine than thy mildest day. 

Beneath his gentle hand 

They hope to see no meadow, vale, or hill 
Stained with a deeper red than roses spill, 

When some too boisterous zephyr sweeps the 
land. 

A time of peaceful prayer. 

Of law, love, labor, honest loss and gain — 
These are the visions of the coming reign 

Now floating to them on this wintry air. 



122 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



STANZAS 

A MOTHER GAZES UPON HER DAUGHTER, ARRAYED 
FOR AN APPROACHING BRIDAL. WRITTEN IN IL- 
LUSTRATION OF A TABLEAU VIVANT 

Is she not lovely ! Oh ! when, long ago, 
My own dead mother gazed upon my face, 

As I stood blushing near in bridal snow, 
I had not half her beauty and her grace. 

Yet that fond mother praised, the world caressed, 
And one adored me — how shall he who soon 

Shall wear my gentle flower upon his breast, 
Prize to its utmost worth the priceless boon ? 

Shall he not gird her, guard her, make her rich, 
(Not as the world is rich, in outward show,) 

With all the love and watchful kindness which 
A wise and tender manhood may bestow ? 

Oh ! I shall part from her with many tears, 
My earthly treasure, pure and undefiled ! 

And not without a weight of anxious fears 
For the new future of my darling child. 

And yet — for well I know that virgin heart — 
No wifely duty will she leave undone ; 



STANZAS 123 

Nor will her love neglect that woman's art 
Which courts and keeps a love already won. 

In no light girlish levity she goes 

Unto the altar where they wait her now, 

But with a thoughtful, prayerful heart that knows 
The solemn purport of a marriage vow. 

And she will keep, with all her soul's deep truth, 
The lightest pledge which binds her love and 
life; 

And she will be — no less in age than youth 
My noble child will be — a noble wife. 

And he, her lover ! husband ! what of him ? 

Yes, he will shield, I think, my bud from blight ! 
Yet griefs will come — enough ! my eyes are dim 

With tears I must not shed — at least, to-night. 

Bless thee, my daughter ! — Oh ! she is so fair ! — 
Heaven bend above thee with its starriest 
skies ! 

And make thee truly all thou dost appear 
Unto a lover's and thy mother's eyes ! 



124 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



HYMN 

SUNG AT AN ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASYLUM OF 
ORPHANS AT CHARLESTON 

We scarce, O God ! could lisp thy name, 
When those who loved us passed away, 

And left us but thy love to claim, 

With but an infant's strength to pray. 

Thou gav'st that Refuge and that Shrine, 
At which we learn to know thy ways ; 

Father ! the fatherless are thine ! 

Thou wilt not spurn the orphan's praise. 

Yet hear a single cry of pain ! 

Lord 1 whilst we dream in quiet beds, 
The summer sun and winter rain 

Beat still on many homeless heads. 

And o'er this weary earth, we know, 

Young outcasts roam the waste and wave ; 

And little hands are clasped in woe 
Above some tender mother's grave. 

Ye winds ! keep every storm aloof, 
And kiss away the tears they weep ! 

Ye skies, that make their only roof. 
Look gently on their houseless sleep ! 



TO A CAPTIVE OWL 125 

And thou, O Friend and Father ! find 
A home to shield their helpless youth ! 

Dear hearts to love — sweet ties to bind — 
And guide and guard them in the truth ! 



TO A CAPTIVE OWL 

I SHOULD be dumb before thee, feathered sage ! 

And gaze upon thy phiz with solemn awe, 
But for a most audacious wish to gauge 

The hoarded wisdom of thy learned craw. 

Art thou, grave bird ! so wondrous wise indeed ? 

Speak freely, without fear of jest or gibe — 
What is thy moral and religious creed ? 

And what the metaphysics of thy tribe ? 

A Poet, curious in birds and brutes, 

I do not question thee in idle play ; 
What is thy station ? What are thy pursuits ? 

Doubtless thou hast thy pleasures — what are 
they ? 

Or is 't thy wont to muse and mouse at once, 
Entice thy prey with airs of meditation, 

And with the unvarying habits of a dunce, 
To dine in solemn depths of contemplation ? 



126 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

There may be much — the world at least says 
so — 

Behind that ponderous brow and thoughtful gaze ; 
Yet such a great philosopher should know, 

It is by no means wise to think always. 

And, Bird, despite thy meditative air, 
I hold thy stock of wit but paltry pelf — 

Thou show'st that same grave aspect everywhere. 
And wouldst look thoughtful, stuffed, upon a 
shelf. 

I grieve to be so plain, renown gd Bird — 
Thy fame 's a flam, and thou an empty fowl ; 

And what is more, upon a Poet's word 
I 'd say as much, wert thou Minerva's owl. 

So doif th' imposture of those heavy brows ; 

They do not serve to hide thy instincts base — 
And if thou must be sometimes munching mouse^ 

Munch it, O Owl ! with less profound a face. 



LOVE'S LOGIC 127 



LOVE'S LOGIC 



And if I ask thee for a kiss, 

I ask no more than this sweet breeze, 
With far less title to the bliss, 

Steals every minute at his ease. 
And yet how placid is thy brow ! 

It seems to woo the bold caress, 
While now he takes his kiss, and now 

All sorts of freedoms with thy dress. 

Or if I dare thy hand to touch, 

Hath nothing pressed its palm before ? 
A flower, I 'm sure, hath done as much, 

And ah ! some senseless diamond more. 
It strikes me, love, the very rings, 

Now sparkling on that hand of thine, 
Could tell some truly startling things. 

If they had tongues or touch like mine. 

Indeed, indeed, I do not know 

Of all that thou hast power to grant, 
A boon for which I could not show 

Some pretty precedent extant. 
Suppose, for instance, I should clasp 

Thus, — so, — and thus ! — thy slender waist- 
I would not hold within my grasp 

More than this loosened zone embraced. 



128 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Oh ! put the anger from thine eyes, 

Or shut them if they still must frown j 
Those lids, despite yon garish skies. 

Can bring a timely darkness down. 
Then, if in that convenient night. 

My lips should press thy dewy mouth, 
The touch shall be so soft, so light, 

Thou 'It fancy me — this gentle South. 



SECOND LOVE 

Could I reveal the secret joy 

Thy presence always with it brings, 

The memories so strangely waked 
Of long forgotten things. 

The love, the hope, the fear, the grief. 
Which with that voice come back to me, - 

Thou wouldst forgive the impassioned gaze 
So often turned on thee. 

It was, indeed, that early love, 

But foretaste of this second one, — 

The soft light of the morning star 
Before the morning sun. 

The same dark beauty in her eyes, 

The same blonde hair and placid brow, 



HYMN 129 

The same deep-meaning, quiet smile 
Thou bendest on me now, 



She might have been, she was no more 

Than what a prescient hope could make, — 

A dear presentiment of thee 
I loved but for thy sake. 



HYMN 

SUNG AT THE CONSECRATION OF MAGNOLIA CEME- 
TERY, CHARLESTON, S. C. 

Whose was the hand that painted thee, O Death ! 

In the false aspect of a ruthless foe, 
Despair and sorrow waiting on thy breath — 

O gentle Power ! who could have wronged thee 
so? 

Thou rather shouldst be crowned with fadeless 
flowers, 

Of lasting fragrance and celestial hue ; 
Or be thy couch amid funereal bowers. 

But let the stars and sunlight sparkle through. 

So, with these thoughts before us, we have fixed 
And beautified, O Death ! thy mansion here, 

Where gloom and gladness — grave and garden — 
mixed, 
Make it a place to love, and not to fear. 



130 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Heaven ! shed thy most propitious dews around ! 

Ye holy stars ! look down with tender eyes, 
And gild and guard and consecrate the ground 

Where we may rest, and whence we pray to rise. 



HYMN 

SUNG AT A SACRED CONCERT AT COLUMBIA, S. C. 
I 

Faint falls the gentle voice of prayer 
In the wild sounds that fill the air, 
Yet, Lord, we know that voice is heard, 
Not less than if Thy throne it stirred. 

II 

Thine ear, thou tender One, is caught, 
If we but bend the knee in thought ; 
No choral song that shakes the sky 
Floats farther than the Christian's sigh. 

Ill 

Not all the darkness of the land 
Can hide the lifted ey^ and hand ; 
Nor need the clanging conflict cease, 
To make Thee hear our cries for peace. 



LINES TO R. L. 131 



LINES TO R. L. 



That which we are and shall be is made up 
Of what we have been. On the autumn leaf 
The crimson stains bear witness of its spring ; 
And, on its perfect nodes, the ocean shell 
Notches the slow, strange changes of its growth. 
Ourselves are our own records ; if we looked 
Rightly into that blotted crimson page 
Within our bosoms, then there were no need 
To chronicle our stories ; for the heart 
Hath, like the earth, its strata, and contains 
Its past within its present. Well for us, 
And our most cherished secrets, that within 
The round of being few there are who read 
Beneath the surface. Else our very forms, 
The merest gesture of our hands, might tell 
Much we would hide forever. Know you not 
Those eyes, in whose dark heaven I have gazed 
More curiously than on my favorite stars, 
Are deeper for such griefs as they have seen. 
And brighter for the fancies they have shrined, 
And sweeter for the loves which they have talked ? 
Oh ! that I had the power to read their smiles, 
Or sound the depth of all their glorious gloom. 
So should I learn your history from its birth. 
Through all its glad and grave experiences. 
Better than if — (your journal in my hand, 



132 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Written as only women write, with all 
A woman's shades and shapes of feeling, traced 
As with the fine touch of a needle's point) — 
I followed you from that bright hour when first 
I saw you in the garden 'mid the flowers, 
To that wherein a letter from your hand 
Made me all rich with the dear name of friend. 



TO WHOM? 

Awake upon a couch of pain, 

I see a star betwixt the trees ; 
Across yon darkening field of cane, 

Comes slow and soft the evening breeze. 
My curtain's folds are faintly stirred ; 

And moving lightly in her rest, 
I hear the chirrup of a bird, 

That dreameth in some neighboring nest. 

Last night I took no note of these — 

How it was passed I scarce can say ; 
'T was not in prayers to Heaven for ease, 

'T was not in wishes for the day. 
Impatient tears, and passionate sighs, 

Touched as with fire the pulse of pain, — 
I cursed, and cursed the wildering eyes 

That burned this fever in my brain. 



TO THEE 133 

Oh ! blessings on the quiet hour ! 

My thoughts in calmer current flow ; 
She is not conscious of her power, 

And hath no knowledge of my woe. 
Perhaps, if like yon peaceful star. 

She looked upon my burning brow, 
She would not pity from afar, 

But kiss me as the breeze does now. 



TO THEE 

Draw close the lattice and the door ! 

Shut out the very stars above ! 
No other eyes than mine shall pore 

Upon this thrilling tale of love. 
As, since the book was open last, 

Along its dear and sacred text 
No other eyes than thine have passed - 

Be mine the eyes that trace it next ! 

Oh ! very nobly is it wrought, — 

This web of love's divinest light, — 
But not to feed my soul with thought, 

Hang I upon the book to-night j 
I read it only for thy sake, 

To every page my lips I press — 
The very leaves appear to make 

A silken rustle like thy dress. 



134 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And so, as each blest page I turn, 

I seem, with many a secret thrill, 
To touch a soft white hand, and burn 

To clasp and kiss it at my will. 
Oh ! if a fancy be so sweet, 

These shadowy fingers touching mine 
How wildly would my pulses beat. 

If they could feel the beat of thine ! 



STORM AND CALM 

Sweet are these kisses of the South, 
As dropped from woman's rosiest mouth. 
And tenderer are those azure skies 
Than this world's tenderest pair of eyes ! 

But ah ! beneath such influence 
Thought is too often lost in Sense ; 
And Action, faltering as we thrill, 
Sinks in the unnerved arms of Will. 

Awake, thou stormy North, and blast 
The subtle spells around us cast \ 
Beat from our limbs these flowery chains 
With the sharp scourges of thy rains ! 

Bring with thee from thy Polar cave 
All the wild songs of wind and wave, 



STORM AND CALM 135 

Of toppling berg and grinding floe, 
And the dread avalanche of snow ! 



Wrap us in Arctic night and clouds ! 
Yell like a fiend amid the shrouds 
Of some slow-sinking vessel, when 
He hears the shrieks of drowning men ! 

Blend in thy mighty voice whate'er 
Of danger, terror, and despair 
Thou hast encountered in thy sweep 
Across the land and o'er the deep. 

Pour in our ears all notes of woe, 
That, as these very moments flow, 
Rise like a harsh discordant psalm. 
While we lie here in tropic calm. 

Sting our weak hearts with bitter shame, 
Bear us along with thee like flame ; 
And prove that even to destroy 
More God-like may be than to toy 
And rust or rot in idle joy ! 



136 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



RETIREMENT 

My gentle friend ! I hold no creed so false 

As that which dares to teach that we are born 

For battle only, and that in this life 

The soul, if it would burn with starlike power, 

Must needs forsooth be kindled by the sparks 

Struck from the shock of clashing human hearts. 

There is a wisdom that grows up in strife, 

And one — I like it best — that sits at home 

And learns its lessons of a thoughtful ease. 

So come ! a lonely house awaits thee ! — there 

Nor praise, nor blame shall reach us, save what 

love 
Of knowledge for itself shall wake at times 
In our own bosoms ; come ! and we will build 
A wall of quiet thought, and gentle books, 
Betwixt us and the hard and bitter world. 
Sometimes — for we need not be anchorites — 
A distant friend shall cheer us through the Post, 
Or some Gazette — of course no partisan — 
Shall bring us pleasant news of pleasant things ; 
Then, twisted into graceful allumettes, 
Each ancient joke shall blaze with genuine flame 
To light our pipes and candles ; but to wars, 
Whether of words or weapons, we shall be 
Deaf — so we twain shall pass away the time 
Ev'n as a pair of happy lovers, who, 



A COMMON THOUGHT 137 

Alone, within some quiet garden-nook, 
With a clear night of stars above their heads, 
Just hear, betwixt their kisses and their talk, 
The tumult of a tempest rolling through 
A chain of neighboring mountains ; they awhile 
Pause to admire a flash that only shows 
The smile upon their faces, but, full soon, 
Turn with a quick, glad impulse, and perhaps 
A conscious wile that brings them closer yet, 
To dally with their own fond hearts, and play 
With the sweet flowers that blossom at their feet. 



A COMMON THOUGHT 

Somewhere on this earthly planet 

In the dust of flowers to be. 
In the dewdrop, in the sunshine, 

Sleeps a solemn day for me. 

At this wakeful hour of midnight 

I behold it dawn in mist, 
And I hear a sound of sobbing 

Through the darkness — hist ! oh, hist ! 

In a dim and murky chamber, 

I am breathing life away ; 
Some one draws a curtain softly. 

And I watch the broadening day. 



138 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

As it purples in the zenith, 
As it brightens on the lawn, 

There 's a hush of death about me, 
And a whisper, " He is gone ! " 



POEMS WRITTEN IN WAR TIMES 



CAROLINA 



The despot treads thy sacred sands. 
Thy pines give shelter to his bands, 
Thy sons stand by with idle hands, 

Carolina ! 
He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, 
He scorns the lances of thy palm j 
Oh ! who shall break thy craven calm, 

Carolina ! 
Thy ancient fame is growing dim, 
A spot is on thy garment's rim ; 
Give to the winds thy battle hymn, 

Carolina ! 

II 

Call on thy children of the hill, 
Wake swamp and river, coast and rill, 
Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill, 

Carolina ! 
Cite wealth and science, trade and art. 
Touch with thy fire the cautious mart, 
And pour thee through the people's heart, 

Carolina ! 



T42 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Till even the coward spurns his fears, 
And all thy fields and fens and meres 
Shall bristle like thy palm with spears, 
Carolina ! 

Ill 
Hold up the glories of thy dead ; 
Say how thy elder children bled, 
And point to Eutaw's battle-bed, 

Carolina ! 
Tell how the patriot's soul was tried, 
And what his dauntless breast defied ; 
How Rutledge ruled and Laurens died, 

Carolina ! 
Cry ! till thy summons, heard at last, 
Shall fall like Marion's bugle-blast 
Re-echoed from the haunted Past, 

Carolina ! 

IV 

I hear a murmur as of waves 

That grope their way through sunless caves. 

Like bodies struggling in their graves, 

Carolina ! 
And now it deepens ; slow and grand 
It swells, as, rolHng to the land, 
An ocean broke upon thy strand, 

Carolina ! 



CAROLINA 143 

Shout ! let it reach the startled Huns ! 
And roar with all thy festal guns ! 
It is the answer of thy sons, 

Carolina ! 



They will not wait to hear thee call ; 
From Sachem's Head to Sumter's wall 
Resounds the voice of hut and hall, 

Carolina ! 
No ! thou hast not a stain, they say, 
Or none save w^hat the battle-day 
Shall wash in seas of blood away, 

Carolina ! 
Thy skirts indeed the foe may part, 
Thy robe be pierced with sword and dart. 
They shall not touch thy noble heart, 

Carolina ! 

VI 

Ere thou shalt own the tyrant's thrall 
Ten times ten thousand men must fall j 
Thy corpse may hearken to his call, 

Carolina ! 
When, by thy bier, in mournful throngs 
The women chant thy mortal wrongs, 
'T will be their own funereal songs, 

Carolina ! 



144 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

From thy dead breast by ruffians trod 
No helpless child shall look to God ; 
All shall be safe beneath thy sod, 
Carolina ! 

VII 

Girt with such wills to do and bear, 
Assured in right, and mailed in prayer, 
Thou wilt not bow thee to despair, 

Carolina ! 
Throw thy bold banner to the breeze ! 
Front with thy ranks the threatening seas 
Like thine own proud armorial trees, 

Carolina ! 
Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns, 
And roar the challenge from thy guns ; 
Then leave the future to thy sons, 

Carolina ! 



A CRY TO ARMS 

Ho ! woodsmen of the mountain side ! 

Ho ! dwellers in the vales ! 
Ho ! ye who by the chafing tide 

Have roughened in the gales ! 
Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, 

Lay by the bloodless spade ; 
Let desk, and case, and counter rot, 

And burn your books of trade. 



A CRY TO ARMS 145 

The despot roves your fairest lands ; 

And till he flies or fears, 
Your fields must grow but armed bauds, 

Your sheaves be sheaves of spears ! 
Give up to mildew and to rust 

The useless tools of gain ; 
And feed your country's sacred dust 

With floods of crimson rain ! 

Come, with the weapons at your call — 

With musket, pike, or knife ; 
He wields the deadliest blade of all 

Who lightest holds his life. 
The arm that drives its unbought blows 

With all a patriot's scorn. 
Might brain a tyrant with a rose, 

Or stab him with a thorn. 

Does any falter ? let him turn 

To some brave maiden's eyes, 
And catch the holy fires that burn 

In those sublunar skies. 
Oh ! could you like your women feel, 

And in their spirit march, 
A day might see your lines of steel 

Beneath the victor's arch. 

What hope, O God ! would not grow warm 
When thoughts like these give cheer ? 



146 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

The Lily calmly braves the storm, 
And shall the Palm-tree fear ? 

No ! rather let its branches court 
The rack that sweeps the plain ; 

And from the Lily's regal port 
Learn how to breast the strain ! 

Ho ! woodsmen of the mountain side ! 

Ho ! dwellers in the vales ! 
Ho ! ye who by the roaring tide 

Have roughened in the gales ! 
Come ! flocking gayly to the fight, 

From forest, hill, and lake ; 
We battle for our Country's right, 

And for the Lily's sake ! 



CHARLESTON 

Calm as that second summer which precedes 

The first fall of the snow, 
In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, 

The City bides the foe. 

As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud. 

Her bolted thunders sleep — 
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, 

Looms o'er the solemn deep. 



CHARLESTON 147 

No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar 

To guard the holy strand j 
But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war 

Above the level sand. 

And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, 

Unseen, beside the flood — 
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched 

That wait and watch for blood. 

Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade. 

Walk grave and thoughtful men, 
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's 
blade 

As lightly as the pen. 

And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim 

Over a bleeding hound, 
Seem each one to have caught the strength of him 

Whose sword she sadly bound. 

Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, 

Day patient following day. 
Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and 
dome, 

Across her tranquil bay. 

Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands 
And spicy Indian ports. 



148 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, 
And Summer to her courts. 



But still, along yon dim Atlantic line, 

The only hostile smoke 
Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, 

From some frail, floating oak. 

Shall the Spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles. 

And with an unscathed brow, 
Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, 

As fair and free as now .? 

We know not j in the temple of the Fates 

God has inscribed her doom ; 
And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits 

The triumph or the tomb. 



RIPLEY 

Rich in red honors, that upon him lie 
As lightly as the Summer dews 

Fall where he won his fame beneath the sky 
Of tropic Vera Cruz ; 

Bold scorner of the cant that has its birth 

In feeble or in failing powers ; 
A lover of all frank and genial mirth 

That wreathes the sword with flowers ; 



RIPLEY 149 

He moves amid the warriors of the day, 
Just such a soldier as the art 

That builds its trophies upon human clay- 
Moulds of a cheerful heart. 

I see him in the battle that shall shake, 
Ere long, old Sumter's haughty crown. 

And from their dreams of peaceful traffic wake 
The wharves of yonder town ; 

As calm as one would greet a pleasant guest, 

And quaif a cup to love and life, 
He hurls his deadliest thunders with a jest. 

And laughs amid the strife. 

Yet not the gravest soldier of them all 

Surveys a field with broader scope ; 
And who behind that sea-encircled wall 

Fights with a loftier hope ? 

Gay Chieftain ! on the crimson rolls of Fame 
Thy deeds are written with the sword ; 

But there are gentler thoughts which, with thy 
name. 
Thy country's page shall hoard. 

A nature of that rare and happy cast 

Which looks, unsteeled, on murder's face ; 



ISO POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Through what dark scenes of bloodshed hast thou 
passed, 
Yet lost no social grace ? 

So, when the bard depicts thee, thou shalt wield 

The weapon of a tyrant's doom, 
Round which, inscribed with many a well-fought 
field, 

The rose of joy shall bloom. 



ETHNOGENESIS 

WRITTEN DURING THE MEETING OF THE FIRST 
SOUTHERN CONGRESS, AT MONTGOMERY, FEBRU- 
ARY, 1 86 1 



Hath not the morning dawned with added light ? 

And shall not evening call another star 

Out of the infinite regions of the night, 

To mark this day in Heaven ? At last, we are 

A nation among nations ; and the world 

Shall soon behold in many a distant port 

Another flag unfurled ! 
Now, come what may, whose favor need we court ? 
And, under God, whose thunder need we fear ? 

Thank Him who placed us here 
Beneath so kind a sky — the very sun 



ETHNOGENESIS 151 

Takes part with us ; and on our errands run 
All breezes of the ocean ; dew and rain 
Do noiseless battle for us ; and the Year, 
And all the gentle daughters in her train, 
March in our ranks, and in our service wield 

Long spears of golden grain ! 
A yellow blossom as her fairy shield, 
June flings her azure banner to the wind, 

While in the order of their birth 
Her sisters pass, and many an ample field 
Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold, 

Its endless sheets unfold 
The snow of Southern Summers ! Let the earth 
Rejoice ! beneath those fleeces soft and warm 

Our happy land shall sleep 

In a repose as deep 
As if we lay intrenched behind 
Whole leagues of Russian ice and Arctic storm ! 

II 

And what if, mad with wrongs themselves have 
wrought, 

In their own treachery caught. 

By their own fears made bold, 

And leagued with him of old, 
Who long since in the limits of the North 
Set up his evil throne, and warred with God — 
What if, both mad and blinded in their rage. 
Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, 



\ 



152 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

And with a hostile step profane our sod ! 
We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth 
To meet them, marshaled by the Lord of Hosts, 
And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts 
Of Moultrie and of Eutaw — who shall foil 
AuxiHars such as these ? Nor these alone, 

But every stock and stone 

Shall help us ; but the very soil, 
And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, 
And all for w^hich we love our noble land. 
Shall fight beside, and through us ; sea and strand. 

The heart of woman, and her hand, 
Tree, fruit, and flower, and every influence, 

Gentle, or grave, or grand ; 

The winds in our defence 
Shall seem to blow ; to us the hills shall lend 

Their firmness and their calm ; 
And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend 

The strength of pine and palm ! 

Ill 
Nor would we shun the battle-ground, 

Though weak as we are strong ; 
Call up the clashing elements around, 

And test the right and wrong ! 
On one side, creeds that dare to teach 
What Christ and Paul refrained to preach j 
Codes built upon a broken pledge, 
And Charity that whets a poniard's edge ; 



ETHNOGENESIS 153 

Fair schemes that leave the neighboring poor 
To starve and shiver at the schemer's door, 
While in the world's most liberal ranks enrolled, 
He turns some vast philanthropy to gold ; 
Religion, taking every mortal form 
But that a pure and Christian faith makes warm, 
Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, 
Or not in vague philosophies submerged. 
Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, 
And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven ! 
And on the other, scorn of sordid gain. 
Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, 
Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth. 
And, for the poor and humble, laws which give, 
Not the mean right to buy the right to live. 

But life, and home, and health ! 
To doubt the end were want of trust in God, 

Who, if he has decreed 
That we must pass a redder sea 
Than that which rang to Miriam's holy glee, 

Will surely raise at need 

A Moses with his rod ! 

IV 
But let our fears — if fears we have — be still, 
And turn us to the future ! Could we climb 
Some mighty Alp, and view the coming time, 
The rapturous sight would fill 

Our eyes with happy tears ! 



154 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Not only for the glories which the years 
Shall bring us ; not for lands from sea to sea, 
And wealth, and power, and peace, though these 

shall be ; 
But for the distant peoples we shall bless, 
And the hushed murmurs of a world's distress : 
For, to give labor to the poor, 

The whole sad planet o'er, 
And save from want and crime the humblest 

door, 
Is one among the many ends for which 

God makes us great and rich ! 
The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe 
When all shall own it, but the t}^e 
Whereby we shall be known in every land 
Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, 
And through the cold, untempered ocean pours 
Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores 
May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze 
Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas. 



CARMEN TRIUMPHALE 

Go forth and bid the land rejoice, 
Yet not too gladly, O my song ! 
Breathe softly, as if mirth would wrong 

The solemn rapture of thy voice. 



CARMEN TRIUMPHALE 155 

Be nothing lightly done or said 

This happy day ! Our joy should flow 
Accordant with the lofty woe 

That wails above the noble dead. 

Let him whose brow and breast were calm 

While yet the battle lay with God, 

Look down upon the crimson sod 
And gravely wear his mournful palm ; 

And him, whose heart still weak from fear 
Beats all too gayly for the time, 
Know that intemperate glee is crime 

While one dead hero claims a tear. 

Yet go thou forth, my song ! and thrill, 
With sober joy, the troubled days ; 
A nation's hymn of grateful praise 

May not be hushed for private ill. 

Our foes are fallen ! Flash, ye wires 1 

The mighty tidings far and nigh ! 

Ye cities ! write them on the sky 
In purple and in emerald fires ! 

They came with many a haughty boast ; 

Their threats were heard on every breeze ; 

They darkened half the neighboring seas ; 
And swooped like vultures on the coast. 



156 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

False recreants in all knightly strife, 
Their way was wet with woman's tears ; 
Behind them flamed the toil of years, 

And bloodshed stained the sheaves of life. 

They fought as tyrants fight, or slaves ; 

God gave the dastards to our hands ; 

Their bones are bleaching on the sands, 
Or mouldering slow in shallow graves. 

What though we hear about our path 

The heavens with howls of vengeance rent ? 
The venom of their hate is spent ; 

We need not heed their fangless wrath. 

Meantime the stream they strove to chain 
Now drinks a thousand springs, and sweeps 
With broadening breast, and mightier deeps. 

And rushes onward to the main ; 

While down the swelling current glides 
Our Ship of State before the blast, 
With streamers poured from every mast, 

Her thunders roaring from her sides. 

Lord ! bid the frenzied tempest cease. 
Hang out thy rainbow on the sea ! 
Laugh round her, waves ! in silver glee, 

And speed her to the port of peace ! 



THE UNKNOWN DEAD 157 



THE UNKNOWN DEAD 

The rain is plashing on my sill, 

But all the winds of Heaven are still ; 

And so it falls with that dull sound 

Which thrills us in the church-yard ground, 

W^hen the first spadeful drops like lead 

Upon the coffin of the dead. 

Beyond my streaming window-pane, 

I cannot see the neighboring vane. 

Yet from its old familiar tower 

The bell comes, muffled, through the shower. 

What strange and unsuspected link 

Of feeling touched, has made me think — 

While with a vacant soul and eye 

I watch that gray and stony sky — 

Of nameless graves on battle-plains 

Washed by a single winter's rains, 

Where, some beneath Virginian hills, 

And some by green Atlantic rills, 

Some by the waters of the West, 

A myriad unknown heroes rest. 

Ah ! not the chiefs, who, dying, see 

Their flags in front of victory, 

Or, at their life-blood's noble cost 

Pay for a battle nobly lost, 

Claim from their monumental beds 

The bitterest tears a nation sheds. 



158 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Beneath yon lonely mound — the spot 
By all save some fond few forgot — 
Lie the true martyrs of the fight 
Which strikes for freedom and for right. 
Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, 
The lofty faith that with them died, 
No grateful page shall farther tell 
Than that so many bravely fell ; 
And we can only dimly guess 
What worlds of all this world's distress, 
What utter woe, despair, and dearth, 
Their fate has brought to many a hearth. 
Just such a sky as this should weep 
Above them, always, where they sleep ; 
Yet, haply, at this very hour, 
Their graves are like a lover's bower ; 
And Nature's self, with eyes unwet, 
Oblivious of the crimson debt 
To which she owes her April grace, 
Laughs gayly o'er their burial-place. 



THE TWO ARMIES 

Two armies stand enrolled beneath 

The banner with the starry wreath ; 

One, facing battle, blight and blast. 

Through twice a hundred fields has passed ; 

Its deeds against a ruffian foe. 

Stream, valley, hill, and mountain know, 



THE TWO ARMIES 159 

Till every wind that sweeps the land 
Goes, glory laden, from the strand. 

The other, with a narrower scope, 
Yet led by not less grand a hope, 
Hath won, perhaps, as proud a place. 
And wears its fame with meeker grace. 
Wives march beneath its glittering sign, 
Fond mothers swell the lovely line, 
And many a sweetheart hides her blush 
In the young patriot's generous flush. 

No breeze of battle ever fanned 
The colors of that tender band ; 
Its office is beside the bed. 
Where throbs some sick or wounded head. 
It does not court the soldier's tomb, 
But plies the needle and the loom ; 
And, by a thousand peaceful deeds, 
Supplies a struggling nation's needs. 

Nor is that army's gentle might 
Unfelt amid the deadly fight ; 
It nerves the son's, the husband's hand, 
It points the lover's fearless brand ; 
It thrills the languid, warms the cold, 
Gives even new courage to the bold ; 
And sometimes lifts the veriest clod 
To its own lofty trust in God. 



i6o POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

When Heaven shall blow the trump of peace, 
And bid this weary warfare cease, 
Their several missions nobly done. 
The triumph grasped, and freedom won. 
Both armies, from their toils at rest. 
Alike may claim the victor's crest. 
But each shall see its dearest prize 
Gleam softly from the other's eyes. 



CHRISTMAS 

How grace this hallowed day ? 
Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire. 
Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire 

Round which the children play ? 

Alas ! for many a moon. 
That tongueless tower hath cleaved the Sabbath 

air. 
Mute as an obelisk of ice, aglare 

Beneath an Arctic noon. 

Shame to the foes that drown 
Our psalms of worship with their impious drum, 
The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb 

In some far rustic town. 

There, let us think, they keep, 
Of the dead Yules which here beside the sea 



CHRISTMAS i6l 

They Ve ushered in with old-world, English glee, 
Some echoes in their sleep. 

How shall we grace the day ? 
With feast, and song, and dance, and antique 

sports, 
And shout of happy children in the courts, 

And tales of ghost and fay ? 

Is there indeed a door, 
Where the old pastimes, with their lawful noise, 
And all the merry round of Christmas joys, 

Could enter as of yore ? 

Would not some pallid face 
Look in upon the banquet, calling up 
Dread shapes of battles in the wassail cup, 

And trouble all the place ? 

How could we bear the mirth. 
While some loved reveler of a year ago 
Keeps his mute Christmas now beneath the snow. 

In cold Virginian earth ? 

How shall we grace the day ? 
Ah ! let the thought that on this holy morn 
The Prince of Peace — the Prince of Peace was 
born, 

Employ us, while we pray ! 



i62 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 

Pray for the peace which long 
Hath left this tortured land, and haply now 
Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow, 

There hardly safe from wrong ! 

Let every sacred fane 
Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, 
And, with the cloister and the tented sod, 

Join in one solemn strain ! 

With pomp of Roman form, 
With the grave ritual brought from England's 

shore. 
And with the simple faith which asks no more 

Than that the heart be warm ! 

He, who, till time shall cease. 
Will watch that earth, where once, not all in vain. 
He died to give us peace, may not disdain 

A prayer whose theme is — peace. 

Perhaps ere yet the Spring 
Hath died into the Summer, over all 
The land, the peace of His vast love shall fall. 

Like some protecting wing. 

Oh, ponder what it means ! 
Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way ! 
Oh, give the vision and the fancy play, 

And shape the coming scenes ! 



CHRISTMAS 163 

Peace in the quiet dales, 
Made rankly fertile by the blood of men, 
Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen, 

Peace in the peopled vales ! 

Peace in the crowded town, 
Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain, 
Peace in the highway and the flowery lane, 

Peace on the wind-swept down ! 

Peace on the farthest seas, 
Peace in our sheltered bays and ample streams. 
Peace wheresoe'er our starry garland gleams, 

And peace in every breeze ! 

Peace on the whirring marts. 
Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams. 
Peace, God of Peace ! peace, peace, in all our 
homes. 

And peace in all our hearts ! 



i64 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



ODE 

SUNG ON THE OCCASION OF DECORATING THE GRAVES 
OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD, AT JVIAGNOLIA CEME- 
TERY, CHARLESTON, S. C, 1 867 

I 

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, 
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause ; 

Though yet no marble column craves 
The pilgrim here to pause. 

II 

In seeds of laurel in the earth 

The blossom of your fame is blown. 

And somewhere, waiting for its birth, 
The shaft is in the stone ! 

Ill 

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years 
Which keep in trust your storied tombs, 

Behold ! your sisters bring their tears. 
And these memorial blooms. 

IV 

Small tributes ! but your shades will smile 
More proudly on these wreaths to-day, 

Than when some cannon-moulded pile 
Shall overlook this bay. 



ODE 165 

V 

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies ! 

There is no holier spot of ground 
Than where defeated valor lies. 

By mourning beauty crowned ! 



SONNETS 



SONNETS 

I 
Poet ! if on a lasting fame be bent 
Thy unperturbing hopes, thou will not roam 
Too far from thine own happy heart and home ; 
Cling to the lowly earth, and be content ! 
So shall thy name be dear to many a heart ; 
So shall the noblest truths by thee be taught ; 
The flower and fruit of wholesome human thought 
Bless the sweet labors of thy gentle art. 
The brightest stars are nearest to the earth, 
And we may track the mighty sun above, 
Even by the shadow of a slender flower. 
Always, O bard, humility is power ! 
And thou mayst draw from matters of the hearth 
Truths wide as nations, and as deep as love. 



I70 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



II 

Most men know love but as a part of life ; 
They hide it in some corner of the breast, 
Even from themselves ; and only when they rest 
In the brief pauses of that daily strife, 
Wherewith the world might else be not so rife, 
They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy 
To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy) 
And hold it up to sister, child, or wife. 
Ah me ! why may not love and life be one ? 
Why walk we thus alone, when by our side. 
Love, like a visible God, might be our guide ? 
How would the marts grow noble ! and the street, 
Worn like a dungeon-floor by weary feet. 
Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun ! 



SONNETS 171 



III 

Life ever seems as from its present site 
It aimed to lure us. Mountains of the past 
It melts, with all their crags and caverns vast, 
Into a purple cloud ! Across the night 
Which hides what is to be, it shoots a light 
All rosy with the yet unrisen dawn. 
Not the near daisies, but yon distant height 
Attracts us, lying on this emerald lawn. 
And always, be the landscape what it may — 
Blue, misty hill or sweep of glimmering plain - 
It is the eye's endeavor still to gain 
The fine, faint limit of the bounding day. 
God, haply, in this mystic mode, would fain 
Hint of a happier home, far, far away ! 



172 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



IV 

They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly, 
And why ? because, forsooth, so many moons, 
Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, 
Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes 
In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons 
Oppress not with their beauty ; they could prate, 
Even while a prophet read the solemn runes 
On which is hanging some imperial fate. 
How know they, these good gossips, what to thee 
The ocean and its wanderers may have brought ? 
How know they, in their busy vacancy. 
With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught ? 
Or that thou dost not bow thee silently 
Before some great unutterable thought ? 



SONNETS 173 



Some truths there be are better left unsaid ; 
Much is there that we may not speak unblamed. 
On words, as wings, how many joys have fled ! 
The jealous fairies love not to be named. 
There is an old-world tale of one whose bed 
A genius graced, to all, save him, unknown ; 
One day the secret passed his lips, and sped 
As secrets speed — thenceforth he slept alone. 
Too much, oh ! far too much is told in books ; 
Too broad a daylight wraps us all and each. 
Ah ! it is well that, deeper than our looks, 
Some secrets lie beyond conjecture's reach. 
Ah ! it is well that in the soul are nooks 
That will not open to the keys of speech. 



174 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



VI 

I SCARCELY grieve, O Nature ! at the lot 

That pent my life within a city's bounds, 

And shut me from thy sweetest sights and sounds. 

Perhaps I had not learned, if some lone cot 

Had nursed a dreamy childhood, what the mart 

Taught me amid its turmoil ; so my youth 

Had missed full many a stern but wholesome truth. 

Here, too, O Nature ! in this haunt of Art, 

Thy power is on me, and I own thy thrall. 

There is no unimpressive spot on earth I 

The beauty of the stars is over all, 

And Day and Darkness visit every hearth. 

Clouds do not scorn us : yonder factory's smoke 

Looked like a golden mist when morning broke. 



SONNETS 175 



VII 

Grief dies like joy ; the tears upon my cheek 
Will disappear like dew. Dear God ! I know 
Thy kindly Providence hath made it so, 
And thank thee for the law. I am too weak 
To make a friend of Sorrow, or to wear, 
With that dark angel ever by my side 
(Though to thy heaven there be no better guide), 
A front of manly calm. Yet, for I hear 
How woe hath cleansed, how grief can deify. 
So weak a thing it seems that grief should die. 
And love and friendship with it, I could pray, 
That if it might not gloom upon my brow, 
Nor weigh upon my arm as it doth now, 
No grief of mine should ever pass away. 



176 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



VIII 

At last, beloved Nature ! I have met 
Thee face to face upon thy breezy hills, 
And boldly, where thy inmost bowers are set, 
Gazed on thee naked in thy mountain rills. 
When first I felt thy breath upon my brow, 
Tears of strange ecstasy gushed out like rain, 
And with a longing, passionate as vain, 
I strove to clasp thee. But, I know not how. 
Always before me didst thou seem to glide ; 
And often from one sunny mountain-side. 
Upon the next bright peak I saw thee kneel. 
And heard thy voice upon the billowy blast ; 
But, climbing, only reached that shrine to feel 
The shadow of a Presence which had passed. 



SONNETS 177 



IX 

I KNOW not why, but all this weary day, 
Suggested by no definite grief or pain, 
Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain; 
Now it has been a vessel losing way, 
Rounding a stormy headland ; now a gray 
Dull waste of clouds above a wintry main ; 
And then, a banner, drooping in the rain, 
And meadows beaten into bloody clay. 
Strolling at random with this shadowy woe 
At heart, I chanced to wander hither ! Lo ! 
A league of desolate marsh-land, with its lush, 
Hot grasses in a noisome, tide-left bed, 
And faint, warm airs, that rustle in the hush, 
Like whispers round the body of the dead ! 



178 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



(written on a very small sheet of note- 
paper) 

Were I the poet-laureate of the fairies, 

Who in a rose-leaf finds too broad a page ; 

Or could I, like your beautiful canaries, 

Sing with free heart and happy, in a cage ; 

Perhaps I might within this little space 

(As in some Eastern tale, by magic power, 

A giant is imprisoned in a flower) 

Have told you something with a poet's grace. 

But I need wider limits, ampler scope, 

A world of freedom for a world of passion, 

And even then, the glory of my hope 

Would not be uttered in its stateliest fashion ; 

Yet, lady, when fit language shall have told it, 

You '11 find one little heart enough to hold it ! 



SONNETS 179 



XI 

Which are the clouds, and which the mountains ? 

See, 
They mix and melt together ! Yon blue hill 
Looks fleeting as the vapors which distill 
Their dews upon its summit, while the free 
And far-off clouds, now solid, dark, and still, 
An aspect wear of calm eternity. 
Each seems the other, as our fancies will — 
The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and we 
Gaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth. 
This foothold where we stand with slipping feet. 
The unsubstantial and substantial meet. 
And we are fooled until made wise by Time. 
Is not the obvious lesson something worth, 
Lady ? or have I wov'n an idle rhyme } 



i8o POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



XII 

What gossamer lures thee now ? What hope, what 

name 
Is on thy lips ? What dreams to fruit have grown ? 
Thou who hast turned one Poet-heart to stone, 
Is thine yet burning with its seraph flame ? 
Let me give back a warning of thine own, 
That, falling from thee many moons ago, 
Sank on my soul like the prophetic moan 
Of some young Sibyl shadowing her own woe. 
The words are thine, and will not do thee wrong, 
I only bind their solemn charge to song. 
Thy tread is on a quicksand — oh ! be wise ! 
Nor, in the passionate eagerness of youth. 
Mistake thy bosom-serpeftf s glittering eyes 
For the calm lights of Reason and of Truth. 



SONNETS i8i 



XIII 

I THANK you, kind and best beloved friend, 
With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister, 
When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her, 
Less for the gifts than for the love you send, 
Less for the flowers than what the flowers convey, 
If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly, 
And not unto myself ascribe, unduly. 
Things which you neither meant nor wished to say. 
Oh ! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced ? 
And am I flattered by my own affection ? 
But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced 
Something above a short-lived predilection, 
And which, for that I know no dearer name, 
I designate as love, without love's flame. 



i82 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



XIV 

Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my 

rhymes, 
Indeed the product of my heart and brain ? 
How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strain 
Falls like faint memories of far-off times ! 
When did I feel the sorrow, act the part, 
Which I have striv'n to shadow forth in song ? 
In what dead century swept that mingled throng 
Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart ? 
Not in the yesterdays of that still life 
Which I have passed so free and far from strife. 
But somewhere in this weary world I know, 
In some strange land, beneath some orient clime, 
I saw or shared a mart}Tdom sublime, 
And felt a deeper grief than any later woe. 



SONNETS 183 



XV 

IN MEMORIAM — HARRIS SIMONS 

True Christian, tender husband, gentle Sire, 

A stricken household mourns thee, but its loss 

Is Heaven's gain and thine ; upon the cross 

God hangs the crown, the pinion, and the lyre : 

And thou hast won them all. Could we desire 

To quench that diadem's celestial light. 

To hush thy song and stay thy heavenward flight. 

Because we miss thee by this autumn fire ? 

Ah, no ! ah, no ! — chant on ! — soar on ! — Reign 

on ! 
For we are better — thou art happier thus ; 
And haply from the splendor of thy throne, 
Or haply from the echoes of thy psalm, 
Something may fall upon us, like the calm 
To which thou shalt hereafter welcome us ! 



POEMS NOW FIRST COLLECTED 



SONG 

COMPOSED FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, AND RE- 
SPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO THE OFFICERS AND 
MEMBERS OF THE WASHINGTON LIGHT INFANTRY 
OF CHARLESTON, FEBRUARY 2 2, 1 859 

A HUNDRED years and more ago 

A little child was born — 
To-day, with pomp of martial show, 

We hail his natal morn. 

Who guessed as that poor infant wept 

Upon a woman's knee, 
A nation from the centuries stept 

As weak and frail as he ? 

Who saw the future on his brow 

Upon that happy morn ? 
We are a mighty nation now 

Because that child was born. 

To him, and to his spirit's scope, 

Besides a glorious home. 
We owe that what we have and hope 

Are more than Greece and Rome. 



POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



A BOUQUET 

Take first a Cowslip, then an Asphodel, 

A bridal Rose, some sno\^7 Orange flowers j 
A Lily next, and by its spotless bell 

Place the bright Iris^ darling of the showers j 
Set gold Nasturtiums, Elder blooms between, 

And Heart's-ease to the Orchis marry sweetly ; 
Then with red Pinks, and slips of Evergreen, 

You will possess — all folded up discreetly — 
In one bouquet, that none but you may know, 

The name I love beyond all names below. 



LINES 189 



LINES 



I STOOPED from star-bright regions, where 
Thou canst not enter even in prayer ; 
And thought to light thy heart and hearth 
With all the poesy of earth. 

Oh, foolish hope ! those mystic gleams 
To thee were unsubstantial dreams ; 
The paltry world had made thee blind. 
And shut thy heart and dulled thy mind. 

I was a vassal at thy feet, 
And cringed more meanly than was meet, 
And since I dared not to be free, 
Was scouted as a slave should be. 

I gave thee all — my truth, my trust — 
I bowed my spirit in the dust, 
I put a crown upon thy brow. 
And am its proper victim now. 



I90 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



A TRIFLE 

I KNOW not why, but ev'n to me 

My songs seem sweet when read to thee. 

Perhaps in this the pleasure lies — 
I read my thoughts within thine eyes. 

And so dare fancy that my art 
May sink as deeply as thy heart. 

Perhaps I love to make my words 
Sing round thee like so many birds, 

Or, maybe, they are only sweet 
As they seem offerings at thy feet. 

Or haply, Lily, when I speak, 

I think, perchance, they touch thy cheek, 

Or with a yet more precious bliss, 
Die on thy red lips in a kiss. 

Each reason here — I cannot tell — 
Or all perhaps may solve the spell. 

But if she watch when I am by, 
Lily may deeper see than I. 



MADELINE 191 



LINES 



I SAW, or dreamed I saw, her sitting lone. 

Her neck bent like a swan's, her brown eyes 

thrown 
On some sweet poem — his, I think, who sings 
QEnone, or the hapless Maud : no rings 
Flashed from the dainty fingers, which held back 
Her beautiful blonde hair. Ah ! would these black 
Locks of mine own were mingling with it now, 
And these warm lips were pressed against her 

brow ! 
And, as she turned a page, methought I heard — 
Hush I could it be ? — a faintly murmured word, 
It was so softly dwelt on — such a smile 
Played on her brow and wreathed her lip the while 
That my heart leaped to hear it, and a flame 
Burned on my forehead — Sa'ra ! — 't was my 

name. 



192 POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD 



SONNET 

If I have graced no single song of mine 

With thy sweet name, they all are full of thee ; 

Thou art my Muse, my " May," my " Madeline : '* 

But " Julia " ! — ah ! that gentle name to me 

Is something far too sacred for the throng 

Of worldly listeners 'round me. Yet ev'n now 

I weave a chaplet for thy sinless brow; — 

Wilt thou not wear it ? 'T is a fashionable song, — 

I will not say of what, — but on it I 

Have wreaked heart, mind, my love, my hopes of 

fame, 
Yet after all it hath no nobler aim 
Than thy dear praise. Ere many moons pass by, 
When the lost gem is set, the crown complete, 
I '11 lay a poet's tribute at thy feet. 



TO ROSA 193 



TO ROSA : ACROSTIC 

I TOOK a Rosebud from a certain bower, 
And by its side placed an Orange flower, 
Then with the Speedwell, blended the perfume 
And the sweet beauty of an Apple-bloom, 
And thus, 'tis one of the loveliest feats. 
Is spelled a gentle lady's name in sweets. 



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